Summit Elementary Fourth Grader, Diego Flores-Cerezo, Selected as Gaithersburg Junior Mayor

Diego Flores-Cerezo Photo | City of Gaithersburg

Fourth grader Diego Flores-Cerezo, a student at Summit Hall Elementary School, has been chosen as the 2019 Gaithersburg Junior Mayor. He will join Mayor Jud Ashman and members of the City Council at public ceremonies and events around the city this year. His first appearance is at the State of the City address on April 25, where the gavel will be passed by current Junior Mayor Zayd Salahuddin of Dufief Elementary School. Local leaders plan to formally introduce Flores-Cerezo at the Mayor and City Council’s June 3rd meeting.

In his winning essay, Flores-Cerezo writes about how he would improve pedestrian safety in the city. He writes that he would, “add more stop signs to intersections, change speed limits on streets that have more accidents, and add traffic lights where there are none.” He concludes his essay with, “Let’s help keep pedestrians safe in our city.” Read his entire essay on the Gaithersburg website, here.

The “If I Were Mayor…” contest, sponsored statewide by the Maryland Municipal League (MML), the Maryland Mayors Association and the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Company, invites fourth grade students to submit essays describing what they would do as Mayor. This year students were asked to define a specific issue or cause in their community and explain how they would solve it, how they would enlist the help of others, and how they would communicate the positive changes taking place in their community as a result.

While all essays from Gaithersburg students were submitted to MML for consideration in the statewide contest, they were also independently reviewed by members of the Gaithersburg Educational Enrichment Committee and City staff for consideration as Gaithersburg’s Junior Mayor. Five finalists were invited to City Hall for a video interview, and Flores-Cerezo was selected as the winner.

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