The Coronado High School students from the StopTheSewage Club, founded by Danny Vinegrad and Sean Wilbur, flew to Sacramento last week to advocate for our beaches and air quality, showing us the power of youth voices and the true leadership forming for our Coronado future. I want to thank the two exceptional teachers, Ian Silverman (Government AP) and Abbie Hartge (Engineering, and the STS Club teacher sponsor) , and our School Board Trustee Alexia Palacios-Peters for accompanying us on this amazing trip to the state Capitol. We are grateful to the Lieutenant Governor, Elani Kounalakas, and her staff for allowing us to use her private conference room as our staging area for the day, and for the Capitol tour arranged by our elected officials, including our Assemblymember Tasha Boerner. The students went door to door to educate and advocate to almost every elected official in Sacramento. It was impressive to witness.
The students also exercised wisdom in including a student leader from Chula Vista, Eric Camberos, to broaden the coalition’s influence and the power of that inclusion to the Television stations (NBC 7 and KPBS-TV) that covered this trip. Other student leaders on the trip included Cole Bennett, Andrea Reyes, Megan Hewett, Anika Talavera, Jillian Stachowicz, Madden Pederziani-Cole, Connor Albertson, Quinn Riebe, Mason Patterson, Kleber Toala, Haissam Kouli, and Donovan Peters. These students have demonstrated the importance of their agency in shaping the policies and laws that govern our world, and we should be proud of their efforts and support them in these endeavors going forward. Their next trip is tentatively scheduled for April of 2026, and they raise funds themselves through www.stopthesewage.org, a 501(c) (3). Please contribute to help these young leaders to better our community. It’s clear they know how it’s done and are willing to put in the hard work to do it.
VOL. 116, NO. 5 – Feb. 4, 2026