Connie Young-Hunt

Past, present, future. The echo of footsteps through the halls of Meridian five, ten, fifty years ago, all audible at once. The possibilities once seen in the students who packed these corridors have turned into the challenges they’ve overcome, and what they have given and received from the world are the themes that district board member Connie Young-Hunt says make Meridian what it is. She lists the professionals who were educated here first: doctors, lawyers, electricians, engineers, and college professors. “Everything that you know out in this world,” Connie says, “that’s in the people that just walk these halls.”

Connie last walked these halls as a student in 1992. After moving to St. Louis and having two children, her post-high school trajectory led her to a lifelong career in social work. Her experience with homelessness ultimately inspired her to attend the University of St. Louis and earn a degree in psychology with a specialization in social work. This eventually brought her back home to work at the Pulaski County Housing Authority for 16 years. “I wanted to help people,” Connie asserts. “I wanted to move back home, and an opening came in Mounds. I got that job.” She had been serving the St. Louis area at the St. Patrick Center, where she distributed Shelter Plus Care vouchers to mentally ill, HIV-positive, and other at-risk populations. The move to the Housing Authority in Mounds only made sense, and with her preparatory experience in St. Louis, she’d now be able to assist the area that gave her her start, not just in her professional calling, but in service to the community through volunteerism and board work.

What brings someone like Connie Young-Hunt to the often-exasperating call of school board service? “Someone asked me to,” she smiles. “I have always been interested in community... I’ve always said I wanted to be in the meeting before the meeting.” That someone was Connie’s cousin, who first urged her to put her name on the ballot. Though confident in her abilities, she wasn’t without disbelief when the vote tally secured her seat on the board: “I thought, ‘Wow, is this real? They’re going to trust me to do this?’” Connie’s constituency had already answered that question by ballot, saying, yes, it’s real. Of course, we trust you; you’ve always been a voice for this community. Her trust and involvement are what make her service meaningful.

The specific qualifications of a background in social work help Connie identify holistic solutions to seemingly disparate issues. Because of what she’s learned in her experiences at the housing authority, she confidently states that the school environment is everything. “It’s your work environment,” Connie explains. “Your work environment means so much because you spend a lot of time there — even for the students.” The key is for students to have a hygienically clean environment and an environment cleansed of physical, mental, and emotional risk factors.

Big picture, Connie would like to see more student talent — athletic and academic — leave here and go on to Division I schools and other four-year colleges and universities. “Why do we not have more of our young men and young women who play as athletes at these four-year schools?” she asks because she knows the people who walk these halls and is deeply aware of their capabilities. Education plays a crucial role in shaping these trajectories. Though the four-year university track has become more difficult to attain in recent years for some student populations, the challenges of the application and scholarship process are symbolic of the stuff through which we all must trudge, Connie reminds us. “You have to go through these life challenges,” she emphasizes. “I tell my kids now, as they’re starting to experience life, paying their own way; it gets tough.” Overcoming these challenges, Connie believes, is part of what makes us better people in the end. We are, after all, defined by the halls we walk and the experiences we claim as uniquely ours.