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Miami Palmetto High School senior Angelina Astic is a public policy intern for the organization Safeguarding American Values for Everyone LGTQ. The organization’s mission is to work to ensure that the rights of those in the LGBTQ community are protected under the laws of their communities.
“I lead a brand-new project to establish a Municipal Equality Index (MEI Index),” she says.
“I’m compiling legislation and ordinances in Pinecrest. There are different sections in the MEI index that you get for points.”
She goes through the legislation or ordinances to see if there are loopholes that need to be addressed. She looks for five major points: Non-discrimination laws, the municipality as an employer, municipal services, law enforcement and the leadership of LGBTQ equality.
She says Pinecrest is doing very well. Last legislative session they issued a resolution condemning the bill that prohibited transgender students from playing sports.
“Ahead of this happening, I was allowed to go speak at one of Pinecrest meetings,” she says.
She started interning a year ago and continues to intern now.
“After the index gets reviewed and sent to the Human Rights campaign, SAVE has given me this go ahead to take this project to Palmetto Bay and hopefully to continue to expand through South Florida,” she says.
Astic spend about four hours a week on the research.
“This has given me a look into what goes into public policy,” she says. “How it goes from a thought to action.”
She’s also an organizing fellow for District Nine School Board member Luisa Santos working on constituent service.
“We do a lot of phone banking and contacting members of the community of District Nine,” she says. “We speak to all people across Miami-Dade County. My job is to make sure they are heard.”
At Palmetto, Astic is president of the Panther Newspaper and the Panther Club, a copy editor and a contents editor.
While there have been few changes at the paper this year, Astic says they did add a culture blog. That blog is based on pop culture, arts and music. That’s in addition to the existing PTSA and ESSAC blog.
“I’m in charge of a lot of portions of the print,” she says. “The news briefs, letter to the editor, columns.”
She’s also in charge of the online blogs, and she chose the people who do the blogs.
Astic is the diversity, advocacy and inclusion chair for the PTSA. She was named to that position by the PTSA president.
“This is a student chair position,” she says. “To my knowledge, at this school, this is the first time we’ve had this position.”
She was a grants writer for the Pinecrest City Music Project until recently. She was successful in securing a Miami-Dade County grant that helped pay for an interpreter for an event.
“I really appreciate my time there,” she says.
The summer before her sophomore year, Astic served as a junior naturalist for the Deering Estate Summer Camp.
“I worked for the younger group known as Eco Explorers, teaching them about the wildlife and the different ecological issues,” she says. “I did a weeklong training with the staff. I became familiar with wildlife and what to do and what not to do. It provided me with a lot of important life lessons.”
For college, Astic has decided to remain in Florida. Her plan is to go to law school after she graduates. She plans to double major in pre-law and economics. There’s also the possibility of an interdisciplinary degree combining political science and public policy and international affairs.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
