All Saints Students Present Ideas for City Improvement to Tyler City Officials

Eighth graders from All Saints Episcopal School in Tyler presented ideas on how to better the city to top city officials last spring.

The presentation covered by KLTV-TV Tyler showed students presenting “Our Voices for a Better City” based on a semester-long collaboration with college students from UT Tyler and the City of Tyler officials. Plans were based on categories including traffic mitigation, services for the homeless, park beautification, and programs for animal services.

The mayor, city manager, and deputy manager listened and took notes throughout the presentation. “We want to get a sense of the younger voices in the community to determine what sort of ideas they have to improve Tyler,” said Rick Helfers of the UT Tyler Social Science Department.

“We get stuck in a rut and we think we are doing everything the right way,” Tyler Mayor Don Warren said in the television interview. “We’re not perfect and that is what’s so fun about these young people is you hear the new energy, you hear the new ideas. We heard them and we listened.”

(Special thanks to KLTV-TV Tyler for the original story which aired in April 2022.)