Ventura Students Reveal Hopes for Future

As part of a project called “Balboa Ventura Vision 2020,” 11 students at Balboa Middle School and more than 100 students at Pacific High School are asking their classmates to imagine what Ventura will look like in 2020.

Students at both schools were asked to complete a survey with two questions: What would you like to see more of in the year 2020? What would like to see less of in the year 2020?

Students filled out the surveys in their first-period classes, and the vision committee tallied the results, which will become part of Ventura’s “Seize the Future” project.

“We sent the survey out to our peer students, and now we’re typing out the results from those surveys. We sent out 1,200 surveys and received back about 660 of them,” said Amanda Hood, 13, a Balboa seventh-grader and member of the committee.

Paul Belgum, a teacher at Pacific High School, said the surveys of Pacific students revealed a consensus to keep Ventura connected with the natural world and to limit construction projects.

Recommendations included the establishment of a teen nightclub, city jobs for teenagers, even a detailed design for a walking/bike path and skate park at Kimball and Johnson streets.

One committee member, Kristan Adams, 13, said she initially joined the effort because it would look good on her college application, but now she is more concerned with the pressing needs in the city.