President Obama signed a spending bill Wednesday that earmarked $285,000 for the Center for Politics’ Youth Leadership Initiative.
Former Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Charlottesville, served on the bill’s appropriations committee and earmarked the funds for the University program. The money will be used to update technology and to create lesson plans for teachers for grades K-12. Additionally, some of the funds will go toward running YLI’s mock election, held annually for K-12 students. More than three million students voted in the 2008 mock election, in which Obama won 60 percent of the vote. YLI conducts the largest online mock election in the nation, said Ken Stroupe, chief of staff of the Center for Politics.
The funding will also allow YLI to continue to provide educational resources to teachers for free.
“We are trying to not lose the momentum we got last year,” YLI Director of Instruction Meg Heubeck said. “We don’t want teachers to think they do not need to teach civics because there is no national election.”
She added that a lack of interest in politics and government is one of the major problems YLI faces in non-election years. The increased funds from the government will help the program keep students informed about civics and encourage them to participate in years when there is no presidential contest.
“They do an excellent job getting young people involved in government,” Goode said, noting that he pressed for the funds to support the program’s core mission of education.
Started as a pilot project in 1999, YLI is a national educational outreach branch of the Center for Politics. Its goal is “to increase civic education by providing teachers with the best materials available to teach American government in their classrooms,” Meg Heubeck said.
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