{"id":24686,"date":"2024-11-27T00:18:02","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T07:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-high-schooler-joins-the-mancos-town-board\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:59:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:59:03","slug":"a-high-schooler-joins-the-mancos-town-board","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-high-schooler-joins-the-mancos-town-board\/","title":{"rendered":"A high schooler joins the Mancos Town Board"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Olivia
Olivia Jukes, 16, gets appointed to the Mancos Town Board as a student liaison. Mayor Cindy Simpson swears her in. (Photo courtesy Tressa Jukes)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A Mancos High School student was formally appointed as a student liaison to the Mancos Town Board at its meeting on Nov. 13.<\/p>\n

Olivia Jukes, 16, is in her junior year.<\/p>\n

Announcements and advertisements at school targeting juniors and seniors to join the board caught her attention, so she decided to apply.<\/p>\n

After submitting \u201ca bunch of paperwork and letters of recommendation,\u201d she found herself at her first town board meeting on the 13th, trying to digest \u201ca lot of information really fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was decently easy to understand,\u201d Olivia said. \u201cI got my huge stack of papers, and I listened.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said only one other student applied for the role.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one had any interest in it,\u201d said Olivia. \u201cIt was the same thing with the school board applications, like three kids applied. Why wouldn\u2019t you want to do that? It\u2019s a great opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to her role on the Town Board, Olivia is a student member of the school board.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe doesn\u2019t get to vote in either place, though,\u201d said Tressa Jukes, Olivia\u2019s mom.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, no I can\u2019t vote,\u201d said Olivia. \u201cI just sit there and listen and ask questions about the many big words.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olivia said that what a lot of kids see as \u201ccheesy,\u201d she deems an opportunity to grow as a leader.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it gives me background into real-world stuff, and how real-world stuff works,\u201d she said. \u201cI tend to focus a lot on school-based stuff, and I know that\u2019s not always what outside of school is.\u201d<\/p>\n

In return for her time on the Town Board, she\u2019ll get a $500 scholarship to go toward a college of her choice. If she opts in for her senior year, too, she\u2019ll get another $500.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy goal is to go to Penn State and study business. Business management,\u201d Olivia said.<\/p>\n

Being on the town board is a great learning opportunity, since she\u2019ll get to see how a town works and manages its finances. She said she\u2019s also curious to learn how the town and school interact.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust getting my voice out there is pretty cool,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Her achievements may start, but do not end, with her contributions to boards in Mancos.<\/p>\n

\u201cI play volleyball; I made varsity this year,\u201d Olivia said.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s been a Girl Scout since kindergarten, and is working on her Gold Award now, which is akin to the Boy Scouts\u2019 Eagle Scout Award.<\/p>\n

In May, she and her troop will go to Scotland, England and Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been saving up for years, selling so many cookies. I sold over 1,000 boxes last year,\u201d Olivia said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver 1,000 the past three, four years,\u201d Tressa said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur main goal is to find a grassy hill \u2013 one of those stereotypical grassy hills \u2013 and roll down it. That\u2019s the thing we\u2019re most excited for,\u201d Olivia said.<\/p>\n

In school, she\u2019s a straight A student \u2013 mostly A+\u2019s, Tressa said \u2013 and is on the National Honor Society. She\u2019s also class president.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor some reason they picked me,\u201d Olivia said with a laugh, about being chosen president of her class.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just thankful she can drive herself to all this stuff,\u201d Tressa joked.<\/p>\n

Plus, she coaches youth volleyball and is a student aid, helping elementary school teachers grade and teach. She said being around kids, in part, inspires her to do all she does.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just being there for them, and they can be like, \u2018Oh, hey, I knew that girl. What if I do stuff like that,\u2019\u201d Olivia said.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, she\u2019d like to own a bookstore and flower shop; to her, \u201creading is everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m also running on spite,\u201d said Olivia. \u201cI told my coworker the idea and she was like, \u2018well that would be a good idea for like when you retire maybe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if \u2018spite\u2019 is the right word. Running on doubts maybe,\u201d Tressa added.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is spite,\u201d Olivia laughed.<\/p>\n

Whatever it is, it\u2019s \u201call culminating toward my goal of getting to the college I want to go to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

a nonvoting member, Olivia Jukes has one meeting under her belt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,83,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78634,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24686\/revisions\/78634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24686"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}