One student from each high school and middle school in the Auburn School District, even one from Green River Community College.

Such could be the makeup of something entirely new to Auburn: a junior City Council.

Its young members could sink their incisors into meaty issues affecting youth, such as gang violence and curfew, and relay their thoughts to the Auburn City Council.

City leaders have talked for the last couple of months about what such a thing would look like, how it would differ from the already existing successful Auburn Youth Council, how it would be constituted and how to make it happen.

And because there is already an Auburn Youth Council operating under the wing of the Auburn Parks, Arts and Recreation Department, leaders are even talking about what they should call the new thing.

“Nobody has been chosen yet, we’re still a ways away from that,” Auburn City Councilwoman Nancy Backus said.

What Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis saw of similar junior youth councils on his yearly trip to the National Conference of Mayors in Washington D.C., this winter inspired him to explore getting one up and going here.

Councilman Bill Peloza suggested it could provide quite the civics lessons to kids.

“I think that this runs into a trend in local government, it’s a dead ringer for it,” he said. “High schools really lack, in my opinion, structure. We’re talking about kids coming into local government, understanding local government and what it does, what do council members do, what do mayors do.

“I think that this type of a council could hold council meetings, discuss certain issues and make decision. And that’s part of the learning process for young people,” Peloza said.

Council member Largo Wales insisted that any such group would have to have adult supervision. And, Wales stressed, it must be for real.

“In order for it to be a meaningful group, it would have to have a real purpose, where what it does goes someplace,” Wales said.

Wales added that she liked the idea of creating another area, or layer, for kids to have leadership opportunities.

“Because again, kids that are in our schools may have lots of opportunities through ASB and sports and band, and this would just be another opportunity so that we could have some real stars. But it all gets back to leadership of this group,” Wales said.

Councilman John Holman described some of the tough issues the panels of young people he’d seen at the National League of Cities Conference were tackling.

“They weren’t discussing what theme to have at the sock hop … they were talking about ways to mitigate youth violence and youth gang participation,” Holman said. “And they were working on high-level, national-level issues and making resolutions. And one of the things they kept coming up with was that to reduce violence, you need to be training leaders. And the first thing in leadership is that you manage yourself, and you lead others.

“Plus the cities (that have them) are getting real work back. The Junior Council in Milwaukee, for instance, does the social media for the City Council,” Holman said.

“It doesn’t necessarily need bylaws, but it definitely needs a mission statement,” said Councilman Rich Wagner. “I would like to hear about policy making.”

Peloza suggested that City staff check with other cities to see how they use their own junior councils.