 Hello, my name is Danny Rogers and I serve as the Chief Judge of the Fort Worth Municipal Court. And I have someone with me here today, Michelle Sims, is our Teen Court Coordinator, which is a very important program that we do here in Fort Worth. So I'm going to ask Michelle a few questions about that so that you all can understand more about an opportunity for the young people in our community. Well, how are you, Michelle? I'm fine. How are you, Judge? I'm very well. Thank you. You are our Teen Court Coordinator. We explain to our good folks that are watching, what is Teen Court? Teen Court is a program that allows youth ages 10 to 17 who receive citations in the city of Fort Worth to resolve those citations by performing community service hours. Is there any limit on the type of citations that they can bring to Teen Court? No, there's no limit on the type of citations. There's just one every 12 months. They can only be enrolled in the program once every 12 months. So what does that program look like for the young people? So what we do is we have a mock court hearing run by teens. So every Tuesday night at 5 o'clock we meet here on the first floor of the courthouse. We have a mock court where teens decide how many hours each participant receives based on a range of hours related to their offense. So it really is a jury of their peers then? Yes, correct. Then are they assigned to do something specific to take care of that? Once they've gone to the jury and they've gotten their hours, what are they supposed to do? Just to locate a non-profit, government agency or school where they can complete their community service. So we suggest that they can do it at their church, their family church if they attend, if there's a community center in their neighborhood. We can also make some suggestions of some non-profit agencies that might be looking for volunteers. So as long as the young person does their community service, do they have to turn something back into you to verify that they've done that? Yes, I'll give them a log to track their community service hours on and they'll just return that within 90 days. Okay, and once they've done all of that, their ticket gets dismissed, right? That's correct. Everything will be dismissed. And that's the goal, isn't it? Yes, that's our goal. So is there any need on the part of teen court for volunteers? Oh, definitely. If we don't have volunteers, teen court can't work. Talk to us about that. Well, we need teen volunteers to serve as our teen attorneys and to serve as jurors for our teen court program, our hearings. We also need adult volunteers to assist with anything from paperwork to greeting our families, checking them in, monitoring courtrooms. And we're always looking for community members who have legal experience so that they can assist in training our teen volunteers and serve as judges for our hearings. So teen court can also be a training ground for young people who think they might be interested in becoming an attorney some day. Is that correct? Yes. And then I know that we've also participated in teen court competition. Yes, that's correct. The City of Fort Worth teen court has won competitions. They've had just a long history of being in the top in those competitions. We're a little proud of that. Yes. Yes, we are. So a teen, then, can volunteer for teen court even if they don't receive a citation? That's correct. Any teen who's interested in any teen that we take teens ages 13 to 18, as long as they're enrolled in school, they're welcome to come and volunteer as a teen attorney. If they want to start out as a juror until they get more comfortable, they can certainly do that, but we welcome any teen who's interested in coming out and checking us out. Commissioner, is there anything we've left out that we would want folks to know about teen court? I don't think so. I think we've covered most of it. All right. So we hope that you will come and see us about teen court if you're interested in volunteering. And also, for those teenagers that you know, if they get a citation from the City of Fort Worth, please come talk to us about teen court because it's a great program to help them learn about what occurred, but also to keep it from being a conviction on their driving record. So thank you, Michelle, for your time today. Thank you.