McCook youth survey shows different priorities

For the past 20 years, the McCook Community Foundation Fund, along with the Nebraska Community Foundation, has conducted a survey of our high school students.

Performed every four to five years so that a student participates at least once, the survey covers a wide range of questions from what they like – or don’t like – about their hometown, what size of town they would like to live in when they are older and what is important to them when deciding where to live when they settle down.

One reason to conduct the survey every few years is to determine trends as the community, as well as the students, changes and evolves. And the most recent survey offered a few surprises.

Perhaps the most dramatic shift in answers came from the question about priorities. The students were asked what is important to them when choosing a place they want to call home and what makes an ideal community.

In 2006, when the survey was done for the first time at McCook High School, recreation ranked as the most important priority. So think fishing and hunting, basketball and tennis courts, movies and music. Young people wanted things to do, which was not unexpected.

Fast forward 20 years, and the tides have turned on what young people expect from their community.

In 2024, safety topped the list of what makes an ideal community. Students want to live in a place that is free of violence and theft. Rounding out the top three in the most recent survey were good schools and proximity to family.

But a place where they feel safe now and in the future is most important to today’s youth.

That sentiment is echoed by others.

K.C. Belitz, the current director for the Nebraska Department of Economic Development, spoke at the McCook Economic Development Corporation’s annual meeting this week and reiterated that a safe place to live is commonly cited by young people across the state when deciding where they want to find a job, where they want to move, where they want to raise their family.

Nebraska is fortunate to be able to offer a level of safety, and McCook in particular, ranks among the safest places to raise your family.

Is it perfect, and will nothing bad ever happen? No. But many of us don’t think twice about leaving our vehicles unlocked and even take it a step further by just leaving the keys in the vehicle. Now, if you leave the keys in the ignition, then you are really trusting.

When our young people say that safety is the most important aspect of an ideal community, what exactly does that look like? Is it more police officers? Is it well-lit streets? Is it sidewalks that are free of barriers? Is it neighbors who know each other? Is it all of the above?

The survey is just the first step. Further conversations with our young people need to be held to dig deeper into their answers, to learn more about what they are thinking and to discover what they think will make their communities safer. And hopefully that will happen over the next few months.

But that is not all that needs to be done with this information.

The survey was not conducted to then be filed away and put onto a shelf. The survey was administered so that it could be used to shape policies and programs moving forward. It was done so that the adults in our community could learn what our young people are thinking. It was done so that we could work together to create the community that our young people will want to return to.

McCook Community Foundation Fund Advisory Committee members are more than happy to share a presentation about the 2024 McCook youth survey with groups, businesses or organizations who would like to learn more. Reach out to any member (contact info is at mccookfoundation.org) to get connected.

Using the data from the 2024 McCook Youth Survey, we can start the conversations about what we need to be doing to encourage our students to return to their hometowns. We can use the information to develop the opportunities that our future leaders are seeking to make an impact on where they live. We can use this insight to invite our young people to be the decision-makers who will shape their hometown into an even better place to call home.