STAFFORD COUNTY — Students at Brooke Point High School are great at getting people to sign-up to vote.
Brooke Point High School’s Inspire Virginia club earned the 2019 Governor’s Award for meeting the criteria of the Governor’s Voter Registration Challenge. This is the third consecutive year the club has earned the award and is the only high school in Virginia to accomplish this challenge.
In order to help register students to vote, leaders tried to identify students in their classes in the fall who were going to turn 18 by Nov. 6, 2018. This helped to get students registered to vote by the time of the November General Election, according to the school division.
In the spring, Inspire Virginia leaders held a voter registration on April 9. They created a video to motivate seniors to vote, invited local officials, and Congressman Rob Wittman (R-Va., 1) addressed the senior class. Leaders were trained to register people to vote in preparation for the event. After the students listened to a couple of speeches and watched the video in the auditorium, they were released into the cafeteria in small groups to register.
“It is critical that young people have a voice in the political process. I applaud the students at Brooke Point for their accomplishment,” said Superintendent Dr. Scott Kizner.
The Office of the Governor established the challenge in 2016 and recognizes schools that achieve at least 65 percent registration of their eligible senior class. The award is intended to recognize and commemorate the efforts of the next generation of leaders to educate, engage, and inform their fellow students about how to get involved in the voting process.
