Newark Teens Gear Up for School Board Elections After Voting Age Extended to 16

On a Saturday in March, approximately 60 teenagers sat in a movie theater at CityPlex12 in Newark, New Jersey eating popcorn and drinking fountain sodas. A DJ played songs by Mary J. Blige and André 3000. It wasn’t a typical Saturday at the movies—the teens were there for a youth-led forum with candidates for their school board. Over the next 90 minutes, the young people listened to candidates answer questions about their priorities, how they’d address disparities in resources, and their plans for strengthening the connection between schools and families. 

Many of the teenagers were considering those questions for the first time. In 2024, Newark became the third city in the U.S., and first in New Jersey, to allow 16-and-17-year-olds to vote in school board elections. The change was spurred by a student-led campaign aimed at giving young people more power at the polls. 

On April 15, eleven candidates are running for three seats on the nine-member board that governs the Newark School District, the first election in which 16- and 17-year-olds who live in the district can cast a ballot. As the election approaches, students are seizing on the opportunity to make their voices heard. 

“It feels very good,” Collins Esubonteng, 16, told Bolts. Esubonteng and six other students coordinated the forum with the help of The Gem Project, a Newark organization that promotes youth leadership. “Now, they’re actually gonna have to listen to us and they have to make changes to cater to us or else they won’t get our vote.”

Newark is the largest city in New Jersey and home to the largest school district in the state. Roughly 40,000 students attend its 63 schools, and 90 percent of students are either Black or Hispanic. Under the new rules, approximately 6,500 teens were eligible to register. (Registration applied to all 16- and 17-year-olds in Newark, regardless of the type of school they attend). As of the March 25 deadline, 1,796 young people, or 28 percent, had registered to vote. 

Newark’s elected school board members play a large role in influencing education in the city, from overseeing and approving the district’s yearly budget—$1.5 billion in 2024—to making decisions about wide-reaching policies such as curriculum and school lunches. Even with that responsibility, just a small number of adults vote in their elections. Last year’s Newark school board election saw just a three percent voter turnout, and no candidate received more than 3,000 votes. 

By lowering the voting age, Newark joins Oakland and Berkeley on the opposite coast in becoming the only U.S. cities in which 16- and 17-year-olds have a say in who sits on their school boards. Two Bay Area cities, plus cities in Vermont and Maryland have also lowered the voting age by allowing kids to vote in local elections. 

Countries including Austria and Nicaragua have lowered the national voting age to below 18 for all elections. Research on these countries shows that allowing young people to start voting earlier can increase voter turnout over time. The expansion of youth voting in Newark last year has inspired other New Jersey cities to follow by introducing similar ordinances. It’s also inspired legislation to lower the voting age for school board elections across the state. 

“It’s just powerful to see how the students… can vote and actually have an impact on their education and things that they really feel like is pressing—they can actually have a voice,” said Nathaniel Esubonteng, an 18-year-old who helped lead Newark’s campaign. 

The push to lower the vote age in Newark began in 2020 when Yenjay Hu and Anjali Krishnamurti, then freshmen and sophomores in high school, grew frustrated with how little say they had in shaping what went on in their schools. Hoping to change that, the pair formed Vote16NJ, the New Jersey branch of the national organization Vote 16 that campaigns to expand voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds. 

The Newark teenagers started with trying to enact sweeping statewide change but faced problems winning support, partly because the idea was new to policy circles. Eventually, Vote16NJ connected with the Institute for Social Justice, a racial and social advocacy organization in Newark that was interested in pursuing the reform. Strengthening their argument, Hu and Krishnamurti discovered that the New Jersey constitution permits local councils to change the voting age.

Krishnamurti says they soon saw other advantages to starting in Newark, the most populous city in New Jersey with the largest school district in the state. The low voter turnout in previous elections showed the necessity for including young people and the city was already home to a large contingent of civically involved students, said Krishnamurti. The pair of teen advocates also recognized that, because of its size, other cities have historically ended up adopting Newark ordinances. 

“We hoped it would set a precedent for the entire state,” Hu, now a student at Yale University, told Bolts. 

In January 2024, the Newark City Council voted to pass an ordinance lowering the voting age, noting that the move would strengthen democracy in the city. 

Krishnamurti, now a student at Harvard University, called the upcoming Newark election “surreal.” “I think this is just the start of what is going to be a really, really long movement of young people advocating for their own rights,” she said. 

The election is just the beginning, though, said Krishnamurti and Hu. They say VOTE16NJ started with school boards because city council members wanted to first see how expanded youth voting went in those elections before considering expanding it further. The group now hopes to eventually change the voting age for the rest of local government elections. 

Newark organizers, schools, and students have taken the lead on registering the new swath of young voters. City youth-focused organizations have been working with schools to educate students about their newfound power by hosting registration events and forums. Last month, Governor Phil Murphy visited a Newark high school along with rapper A Boogie Wit da Hoodie to encourage students to vote. Students have also been canvassing to register their peers. 

Assatta Mann, senior community organizer at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, told Bolts that organizers faced challenges with making kids aware of their right to vote and getting them up to speed with how to register. Changing the voting age for this election required an overhaul of the New Jersey Division of Elections registration system and the agency wasn’t ready to open the rolls until February 1, leaving only two months for kids to register. “Those are some of the major challenges we’re facing, and that’s just around registration, let alone actually then making sure people get to the polls.”

The reform has also influenced how school board candidates are campaigning. One candidate, Jordy Nivar, told Bolts that he coaches youth baseball and he educated his team about youth voting at practices. All of the eligible students on his team are registered, said Nivar, and showed Bolts a video of them holding up his campaign flyers. 

“I didn’t have to push it too much,” said Nivar. “They always figured, listen, if coach is doing this, we got to support him because he always supported us.”

Kanileah Anderson, the only incumbent running for the board, said that she’s made a point to talk in person with students about her platform. She’s seen a change with board meeting attendance, too—the previous week, about 20 students attended a budget meeting. “Parent participation is dismal,” she said. “If somebody’s going to participate, why not the kids, the consumer of the actual product?”

Nakyah Hepdema, a 16-year-old who registered to vote at the forum in March, told Bolts that she wanted the school board to provide more vocational opportunities. “I feel like what’s missing is stuff for careers,” she said.

Hepdema’s friend, Tarayah Shenck, also 16, wants better training for teachers. “Maybe it’s just me but I feel like teachers don’t break down stuff more,” she told Bolts. Newark’s reform follows efforts to lower the voting age in other U.S. cities. Teens in Oakland and Berkeley, California, voted in school board elections for the first time in 2024. Youth turnout was low, with just 600 out of 1,500 registered teens showing up to vote. 

In 2013, the Washington D.C. suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland, became the first place in the U.S. to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in mayoral and city council elections as a way to increase voter turnout and youth interest in civic engagement. In subsequent elections, youths voted at higher rates than the rest of the population, according to a study by Generation Citizen, an advocacy group that boosts civics education. 

Newark’s success has inspired two more New Jersey cities to lower the voting age to 16 for school board elections. An ordinance in Atlantic City cleared legal review while one in Jersey City is still undergoing evaluation. 

Meanwhile, a bill to expand the right to vote throughout New Jersey is pending in the legislature. Governor Murphy, a Democrat, has voiced his support for the legislation. He also wants to provide financial incentives for the change and proposed allocating $1 million to places that lower the voting age for help with IT and voter education as part of his 2026 budget. 

As election day approaches in Newark, students are gearing up to vote. Outside of the forum, young people told Bolts that voting had become a big topic of conversation in their friend circles and were optimistic that lowering the voting age will boost voter turnout. 

“I really do feel empowered when I can vote,” said Gabrielly Ferreira, 16. “My ideas and what I want for my education are now being put out there. So I honestly do believe that the turnout will be much greater than last year’s. And then I also really hope for other students to recognize that in the coming years.”

Zoe Umchukwu, 17, put it plainly: “The power is actually being given to the people. Now it’s not just other people trying to decide what’s best for us, trying to decide what we need and what we want.”