Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is an epistemology and a growing field in youth leadership, youth organizing, and liberatory education spaces. YPAR's commitment to justice is supported by social action because, without action, too many YPAR initiatives close with tepid change and dreams deferred (Bertrand & Lozenski, 2023). In one suburban school community, a cabinet-level district leader with a deep commitment to youth of color built a youth research team into her budget line and her district's strategic and race-equity-based plan, effectively replacing "social action" with adult accountability. Within this article, a high schooler and two university researchers reflect on the ways in which a group of Youth Data Analyst (YDA) interns learned the impacts of youth research on school change. Using artifacts from the summer, such as written reflections, as well as semi-structured interviews of three YDA members, we explore the nuances of justice-oriented youth-adult research partnerships. We discuss how youth leadership is discussed, concealed, and denied in learning communities; our active hope is that these partnerships enact transparency, memory, trust, and power to work toward race equity in schools.