Critical pipeline for prospective lawmakers finally goes coed

After a years-long wait, young women have finally been granted equal access to a program that has proven to be a pipeline for state lawmakers.

For years, the American Legion California Boys State Program had offered high school students entering their senior year a hands-on, mock legislature experience. The program has created future California politicians, notably former Assembly Speaker John Pérez, D-Los Angeles, and current Sen. Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica.

There’s also a separate girls’ program, but there were significant differences between what the boys had available to them and what female participants could expect, including charging girls a $75 application fee while allowing boys into the program at no charge. Young men were also afforded opportunities to meet “directly with representatives from various colleges and career paths” as well as “one-on-one access to government and law enforcement officials where they gain insight and potential career access,” neither of which was offered to the young women in the program.

Former Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino, noted several of these differences in Senate Bill 363, a bill she authored in 2021 to address these disparities. That measure, the Sex Equity in Education Act, mandated that the programs had to be similar if they remained gender segregated.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law in October 2021.

Implementing the bill took some time. This month, the first coed mock legislative experience was hosted in Sacramento, giving girls the same hands-on “course in practical Americanism,” as the boys’ program used to describe itself in its brochures.

“It’s meaningful we’re the first state (in the country) to have a coed program.”

The coed program is now known as American Legion California Boys & Girls State, although there is still a separate girls-only program sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary. The coed program had more than 900 delegates this year, up 100 attendees from last year. About a third of the participants this year were girls.

“I have not seen an energy level like this in years. It’s just fabulous,” said Tim Aboudara, Sr., chief counselor of California Boys & Girls State. He is one of the more than 80 volunteers who staff the program.

“For the first time ever with it being coed …  we now in our program replicating reality reflect the demographic population of the state, male, female, suburban, urban, rural,” Aboudara said. “We’ve made a huge step. … It looks like our state and that is powerful.”

On June 21, participants in the coed program got to meet with Pérez as well as current legislators Assemblymember Megan Dahle, R-Bieber, and Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa.

“I have a special relationship with the American Legion Boys State,” said Pérez, who is now a member of the University of California Board of Regents. The former Speaker called it an “impressive, immersive” program that really teaches young people “what it means to govern,” giving them hands-on experience with the true mechanics of government.

That exposure, he said, can help lead young people to aspire to careers in politics. It certainly did for him – and Pérez is always quick to credit the program’s influence on his career. It’s clear he still feels a sense of belonging with the program.

“It’s meaningful we’re the first state (in the country) to have a coed program,” Pérez said.

Leyva, now the executive director of KVCR TV/FM, the Inland Empire’s only public media station, said making Boys State coed is critical for someday achieving gender parity in the legislature because now the young women who participate in the program can envision themselves as politicians – and maybe run for election one day in the future.

“If you can’t see it, you can’t be it,” Leyva said. “This will help us get to where we need to be,” she added.