How We Built a Community Task Force That Works

When a group of middle and high school students gather in a room and voluntarily discuss cell phones, mental health, and peer pressure while adults intently listen in, taking notes, you know something’s working.

That’s exactly what happened at our Community Youth Summit last spring. Facilitated by our Community Wellness Task Force, this event brought together students from neighboring middle and high schools to explore real-world challenges and propose solutions in their own voices. Conversations were honest, grounded in student experience, and at times eye-opening and profound.

Students shared:

• “Phones help kids fit in, but they also force us to grow up too fast.”
• “Parents shouldn’t assume we’re using our phones the way you think we are.”
• “It’s more important to talk to us than to restrict everything.”

Gathering student insight isn’t new, but the structure we’ve built through our Community Wellness Task Force is; it allows our community to hear it consistently, and act on it collaboratively.

Today, the task force is thriving. It’s a multi-agency partnership of school districts, mental health providers, law enforcement, municipal leaders, and nonprofits working together to promote the well-being of young people in Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, and Knollwood. It’s rooted in shared values, strengthened by authentic collaboration, and, most importantly, responsive to what our students are telling us they need.

But it wasn’t always this way.

How It Started

When I became superintendent in July 2020, our district, like so many others, was focused on safety, logistics, and simply getting through the school year. Amid the chaos, I learned that a community wellness task force had once existed, formed in the wake of a tragic cluster of youth suicides nearly a decade earlier.

It had momentum. It had purpose. It hosted powerful student summits like the one I described. But like many collaborative efforts, the pandemic paused its work, and with urgent needs piling up, the group’s meetings stopped altogether.

Still, the infrastructure was there. Relationships had been built. The need for connection, for shared responsibility, for whole-child support had not gone away; instead, the need was steadily mounting.

So I made a choice to re-engage the group. Not with a grand plan or bold declaration, but simply by showing up. At first, I just attended the meetings. I listened. I learned. I reacquainted myself with the people in the room and the work they cared deeply about. Over time, presence became participation, and participation became leadership.

Sometimes leadership is about tending, not launching.

What We’ve Learned—and How to Start or Restart Your Own

Rebuilding the Task Force didn’t require a strategic plan or a major investment. It required intentionality and patience. And it reminded me that sometimes leadership is about tending, not launching.

For those looking to strengthen or start a community wellness effort of your own, here are a few steps that helped us:

• Start with Presence, Not Plans: Engage by listening. Don’t come in with an agenda; come in with questions. Ask what’s needed, what’s working, and where the group left off or where the group wants to go.
  
• Connect to Purpose: Focus partners on a core purpose. In our case, it began with loss. But our renewed vision is about prevention, opportunity, and proactive support for young people.
  
• Invite the Right Voices and Listen to Students: Who cares about student wellness? Schools, yes—but also police departments, local nonprofits, healthcare providers, park districts, and families. Most importantly, center student voice. Our Youth Summit was a turning point because students were at the table.
  
• Show the Impact, Then Amplify It: As small wins emerge, like new mental health resources or student-led projects, share them widely. Use your district’s platform to spotlight the partnership. When people see themselves in the story, they stay engaged.
  
• Make It a System, Not a Side Project: Wellness work shouldn’t depend on one leader or one grant. It has to be embedded. In our district and our larger communities. Wellness is embedded in our strategic plan, curriculum, and community relationships. It’s part of who we are.

Opportunity is everywhere, especially when we choose to return, rebuild, and reimagine what’s possible together.

The Takeaway

The students who sat around those Youth Summit tables last spring didn’t just share opinions; they shaped a system. Their voice is once again informing policy, professional development, family engagement, and more.

That’s the power of showing up, again and again, for the work that matters.

Opportunity is everywhere, especially when we choose to return, rebuild, and reimagine what’s possible together.