2026 HSLP: Day 4
High School Leaders Program Class of 2026
Day 4: Tuesday, July 14th
Reported By: Karan Bajaj and Matteo Vasquez
Today, we had a productive day in class, exploring a range of political topics such as qualities of a citizen, lobbying, and much more. We promptly began class at 9am and reviewed our culminating project and groups. For this project, students have been split into groups that cover specific issues and groups will design policy to address these issues. There were 5 groups established respectively covering the topics of healthcare, affordable housing, energy, economy, and environment. The groups attentively collaborated and discussed issues, forming discourses where ideas from a range of political perspectives were heard and implemented. After working on this for a focused period, we had a guest speaker, Ms. Ali Mislowsky, who arrived and presented to us about the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP). Ms. Mislowsky is a communications director at VPAP, which is a non-profit organization based in Richmond that aims to maintain transparency in Virginia elections by displaying public donor information and political data. We learned about the VPAP website, which tracks numerous forms of data such as donation amounts, electoral results, donor information, and much more. This helped show us the availability of political data publicly and how it could be used to inform votes, assist journalists, and numerous other purposes. After an interesting presentation and conversation with Ms. Mislowsky, we ate lunch at O-Hill enjoying a variety of food options. We returned from lunch excited and prepared for the beginning of our lesson with Mrs. Heubeck, regarding the Informed and Thoughtful Citizen: History module. In our lesson, we discussed last night's reading and what it meant to be a citizen and values of the American people. Our class had a detailed conversation about how citizens valued justice, individualism, and many other crucial traits. After this captivating discussion and lesson, Mrs. Heubeck’s good friend and colleague, Mr. Jeff Schapiro spoke with us about Virginia’s history and its impact on society and leadership in the present day. We discussed numerous topics such as the impacts of Harry Byrd, modern foliage issues in urban areas, the impact of zoning and construction on minority communities in urban areas, and much more. We finished our day by having dinner at O-Hill and enjoying evening activities such as pickleball, running, and karaoke. Overall, today was engaging, as students participated in numerous discussions, listened to interesting speeches, and worked together to brainstorm solutions.