Meet Connecticut’s ‘Kid Governor’

The governor-elect steps up to the podium in the old statehouse, her cabinet arrayed behind her. It’s January, and inauguration day. She leans in toward the microphone to answer a reporter’s question, “What inspired her to run?”

“I want to be president some day, or something like that,” she explains, “and I really want to make sure I can make a change in the world.”

A presidential run will have to be many years off; first, she needs to finish fifth grade.

This is Tessa Hallinan, Connecticut’s 2026 Kid Governor. The fifth grader was elected by peers across the state after running on a platform of making children with disabilities feel more included.

“Some of the kids in my class and in my grade have disabilities, and I’ve noticed that either they don’t have someone to hang out with at recess, or they don’t have somebody to sit with at lunch,” Hallinan later told Governing. She notes on her campaign page that the issue hits home for her family, too, including a step-cousin who “is teased because he is a cancer survivor and has to wear bags around his waist.”
During her one-year term, Hallinan will encourage fifth graders to step up. Her plan calls for creating buddy programs that have fifth grade leaders pair up with kids with disabilities on group projects and activities, and for designating “buddy” lunch tables for kids who want someone to sit with. She also wants to educate kids on how to be more inclusive and have teachers award kids who do so with “act of kindness” certificates.

The Kid Governor program, she reflects later, “is a great idea for kids around the world or the country. It helps you learn about civics. It helps you learn how to vote, and it helps you think of something that you want to change or make better.”

Kids Find Their Voices

The nonprofit Connecticut Democracy Center launched the Kid Governor program a decade ago to give schools a hands-on way to teach children about state government and civics.

Schools opt in to the free program, and teachers have flexibility in how they run it. Participating students pick an issue they’re passionate about addressing, then research the topic and create a platform identifying three specific ways that fifth graders across the state can make a difference.

“At that age, kids aren’t often asked for their opinion,” says Brian Cofrancesco, director of the Kid Governor program. “They’re not asked what they care about.”

This year’s finalists ran on addressing issues like racism, anxiety and marine pollution.
Odyssey Community School teacher Carol Fellenstein uses the program in her social studies curricula, and pairs it with discussion about Malala Yousafzai and other young people who’ve made a difference.

Just by making platforms, the kids “really, totally experience firsthand that they are important, that they matter,” Fellenstein says. “They totally embrace the fact that, ‘I do have the right to speak. I do have the right to have an opinion.’”

Candidates present their platform in speeches to their peers and run in school elections. The winner becomes the school’s nominee in the Kid Governor election. These candidates make campaign videos, and then fifth graders across the state vote on the top seven candidates. The winner becomes kid governor and the six runners-up form their cabinet.

Once in office, the kid government serves for 1-year terms, during which they have opportunities to raise attention to their issue. The kid governors and cabinet members visit libraries around the state where they present their platforms, and the kid governor maintains a blog where they share their message. A poster contest with the Department of Children and Families further draws attention to the kid governor platform, as do e-newsletter updates to classrooms.

The kid governor also runs monthly cabinet member meetings, where everyone discusses how to advance their platforms.

Working with the cabinet has been “awesome,” Hallinan says, while catching up with Governing a month into her term. “I’m so glad I can work with a bunch of talented, smart young kids who are also around my age.”

The role isn’t a light undertaking.

“I didn’t expect it would be this hard and this complicated,” Hallinan says, noting she’s been writing and giving speeches, preparing for and giving interviews and being part of public events. “It’s a lot of work, balancing kid governor activities and actual life activities.”

Becoming Informed Voters

The other big half of the program is voting. The Kid Governor program sends ballot boxes and voting booths to schools for their elections, and schools spend time preparing kids for how to choose a strong candidate.

Fellenstein has her classroom review prior-year campaign videos so students can evaluate details, like how well a candidate provides proof they can be a good leader and whether their three-point plan would actually involve fifth graders across the state or just be something the governor does alone.

The Kid Governor program also provides rubrics kids can use to score each candidate’s speeches. Those include sections to rate how realistic a candidate’s platform is, how well-researched it is and how well the candidate demonstrates leadership qualities. The students take their notes into the polling booth with them to inform their votes.

Fellenstein also discusses with her students that while they might feel obligated to vote for a friend, “we can’t. We’re not voting for the person. We’re voting for the action that they’re going to take.”

The ‘Heartbeat’ of Kid’s Concerns

Finding their platform can take time, but kids don’t need to solve an issue to impact it, Fellenstein says. 2018 Kid Governor Megan Kasperowski, for example, focused on cancer. She ran with a plan to raise money to support cancer research, send comedians and magicians into hospitals to entertain patients and create video interviews with people who have, or have had, cancer.
“It’s not like you’re going to find the cure for cancer — [though] it’s possible that some 10-year-old could do that — but you can invoke an incredible amount of positive change in the lives of people who might be experiencing cancer,” Fellenstein says.

This year, over 10,400 kids registered to vote in the state’s Kid Governor elections and 51 students ran, per Cofrancesco. The power of that many votes behind the seven finalists should be a wake-up call to adults to pay attention to those platforms, because “that’s the heartbeat of what our kids are thinking about right now,” Fellenstein says.

The program has hit controversy: In 2019, Ella Briggs ran, and won, on a platform of promoting LGBTQ+ youth safety. Schools worried some parents would be upset if classrooms discussed the platform and many teachers opted out of participating, Fellenstein recalls. But, she says, the whole point of the program is to empower kids to speak up for what they care about: “If we’re going to stand there and say, ‘your voice matters,’ then it’s got to be their voice matters all the time, not just selectively.”

Fellenstein, who taught Connecticut’s first-ever kid governor in 2016, has all her students create platforms, whether or not they run, because it teaches kids they have a voice and agency, as well as a responsibility to do the research to inform their opinions.

She recalls a shy, quiet student who built up the courage to survey other students as research to help him develop his platform. “He’s not even remotely the same kid,” Fellenstein says, noting he’s now speaking up all the time in class and volunteering to develop a history game to help teach a lesson.

Regardless of how deeply they participate in the program, for students, “It’s absolutely life-changing,” Fellenstein says.

Since launching in Connecticut, the program has spread, including to Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Oregon.