ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Dozens of Lehigh Valley students from the James Lawson Freedom School gathered at Resurrected Life Church in Allentown on Thursday to show their collective power on National Day of Social Action.
“P-O-W-E-R, we got the power,” the scholars chanted after having interviewed state and local officials about voting, immigration and education.
State Sen. Nick Miller, state Rep. Mike Schlossberg and Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk fielded questions from tiny citizen journalists who came to the town hall with big questions about government and civic life.
The local children are participants in the Lehigh Valley’s James Lawson Freedom School — a six-week summer program based at the church that hosted the event.
The local freedom school is the only in the state, according to local leadership. It’s a national program of the Children’s Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization focused on child advocacy.
CDF freedom schools grew out of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964, according to the CDF’s website.
The project brought college students to Mississippi to work on securing voting rights for Black citizens.
Those young adults created educational opportunities for Black youth, who weren’t learning about constitutional rights or Black history in their public schools.
Lehigh Valley's freedom school
The Lehigh Valley’s freedom school is a multicultural literacy program that uses a curriculum from the CDF.
The program is focused on enrichment opportunities, nutrition and health, mental health, cultural development, social justice and civil work.
It also relies on an intergenerational teaching model.
“We teach our scholars how to advocate, how to show agency and [how to] fight for a cause that’s bigger than themselves."Delia Mitchell, program director of the James Lawson Freedom School
The summer’s program is serving 60 local children, most of whom are from Allentown. The students are in kindergarten through ninth grades.
They have been taught by “servant leaders interns” who are college students, mimicking the work of activists in Mississippi decades ago.
Delia Mitchell, program director of the James Lawson Freedom School, said the local program had 90 additional children on its wait list.
Students in the program have spent the summer reading multicultural books with community members, creating art projects and doing science activities.
They also have participated in daily motivational songs, cheers and chants.
Thursday's National Day of Action saw 12,000 scholars participate throughout the country. The theme was public education for civic life and work.
“We teach our scholars how to advocate, how to show agency and [how to] fight for a cause that’s bigger than themselves,” Mitchell said.
Voting, immigration and education
State Rep. Schlossberg, D-Lehigh, spoke to students at the town hall about the importance of being engaged in civic life.
“The basic responsibility of a citizen is voting and making sure that you pick your elected officials and that your elected officials know what you want and what you want us to be focused on,” he said.
“We all need to work together to create a safe environment that allows you to succeed."Matt Tuerk, Mayor of Allentown
Asked about immigration, Mayor Tuerk stressed local government’s role in making people feel safe.
His statement Thursday comes just weeks after he joined calls for Lehigh County officials to stop federal immigration authorities from working in local courthouses.
That conversation developed as fear has spread amongst immigrant communities throughout the country as President Donald Trump’s administration cracks down immigration and focuses on deportations.
“We all need to work together to create a safe environment that allows you to succeed,” Tuerk told students.
That means “making sure everybody knows what their rights are in this country, and making sure that everybody knows what the federal government can and cannot do in this country,” he said.
State Sen. Miller, D-Lehigh/Northampton, spoke to students about the importance of programs like the freedom school and expressed his support for the BOOST program, which funds prevention-focused activities for at-risk students so they have something safe to do outside of school.
BOOST stands for Building Opportunity through Out of School Time.
The goal of the program is to reduce community violence. About $11.5 million in state funding went toward the BOOST program in the 2024-25 fiscal year.
“That’s something that’s very important to us,” Miller said.
“We’re fighting for it actually [in our current] budget negotiation, making sure that that line item stays there to support programs just like this."
Programs such as the freedom school and others make sure students "have access to the sports and the extracurricular activities that make you be well-rounded as a citizen in Allentown and Pennsylvania," he told students.
State budget update
After Thursday’s event, Miller spoke with LehighValleyNews.com about the status of the state budget, which has not yet been approved.
It was due June 30. This is the fourth year in a row the budget has been late.
“Those are dollars that we’re advocating for that need to be there in the budget for us to get on board."State Sen. Nick Miller
Miller said there’s no specific timeline for when to expect the final budget approval. But he said the state legislature is “having productive conversations.”
“There’s some larger items we’re trying to address,” he said.
“Transportation’s one of them — whether it's mass transit or roads and bridges. That’s something we need to get done.”
Education spending is another important discussion, Miller said.
A 2023 Commonwealth Court ruling deemed Pennsylvania’s school funding system unconstitutional because it put poor students in neighborhoods with low incomes and low property values at a disadvantage educationally.
Last year, the state allocated an adequacy supplement to underfunded districts as part of a nine-year timeline to pour $4.5 billion into the districts that need it most.
“Those are dollars that we’re advocating for that need to be there in the budget for us to get on board,” Miller said.
“It has to be a balance of the [special education] funding, the [basic education] funding and the adequacy funding.
“It’s got to be a balance of those things to have consensus, and I don’t think we’re there yet on where those" level out.
