Students make bid for board positions
Group calls for non-voting voice in district
After the merger process winds down and schools are open in the unified Memphis and Shelby County school district, members of the consolidated board will get a chance to make a stronger commitment to their oftstated view that it’s “all about the students.”
One group of students is preparing to make a serious bid for students on the school board — nonvoting, of course, but with the kind of access that would make sure students’ voices were heard on decisions that they care about.
Students are confident the idea will fly, and their representatives on the board will be taken seriously.
“We’ve already gotten lots of positive responses,” said Flannery Harper, a recent graduate of Central High School and a member of the Bridge Builders Change group, which drafted the 21-page proposal.
“It seems like a logical mechanism to have, anyway,” Harper said. “Many states and school systems have structures like this that are successful. The idea is that schools are in place for students, and no one knows the effects of policies as well as students.”
The 14-member Change group, 12 high school students and two interns affiliated with Bridges, the youth-oriented organization that promotes racial, educational, economic and environmental justice, began training for the project last July at the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tenn.
Meeting at least six hours a week throughout the school year, members conducted research, studied successful student congress and student advisory council programs throughout the country and conducted a survey of students across Greater Memphis gathering opinions on such issues as discipline, security and classroom size.
Members talked to community members who influence or would be affected by changes in education policy, including school district administrators and board members, and conducted focus group sessions. They also met with parents, principals, and other student leaders.
This was the second year of Bridge Builders Change, according to Dana Wilson, who runs the program as Bridges’ director of curriculum development and evaluation. The program was piloted two years ago with research
and surveys of more than 1,000 students.
That group worked closely with Tony Geraci, executive director of MCS nutrition services, to improve school food offerings. They met with community and student groups and appeared before the Transition Planning Commission.
The group’s plan calls for a student congress, composed of high school students from all 46 public high schools in Shelby County, which would meet twice a month.
The group would include two congresspersons, a junior and a senior, who would sit on the school board, reporting research findings and concerns of the student congress to the board and “informing the Student Congress of the Board’s perspective and decisions regarding various issues that pertain to high school students’ educational experience.”
Student school board members would have the power to vote on school board committees to which they have been appointed, could attend and participate in discussions of other committees and would be provided with i nformation, reports, agendas and the like that customarily go to elected board members.
At board meetings, they could introduce resolutions and speak to the business before the body but would not have voting authority.
The proposal reflects one of the recommendations embedded in a merger plan for the new district presented to the board last June by the TPC, and it appears to have some support on the board.
It would be a more robust continuation of a practice of the Memphis City school board before the district’s charter surrender in 2011, when thenCordova High School student Dre’gean Cummings served a year as a nonvoting board member.
“I’m extremely confident this will go through and be taken seriously,” said Cummings. “When I served on the board they were happy to hear what I had to say. It’s important for them to hear what students have to say and what they have to offer.”
“I think many board members have been champions of this over time,” said school board member and Internal Board Operations Committee chair Betty Mallott, who said she would welcome a student board member to her committee table.
“Every board member has seen the benefits of bringing students in and getting their input,” she said. “It’s good training for students to become active in government. Some policies have a lot to do with students. It is a key stakeholder group.”
“I’m personally excited about it,” said Kevin Woods, another member of the IBO. A meeting several months ago with a delegation of students turned out to be “one of the best meetings I’ve had,” Woods said.
“I think they put a lot of things in perspective. You had students from Carver (High School) who talked about how few (advanced placement) courses they had and a student from Collierville who spoke about how unfair they thought it was that they had programs that those students didn’t have. You had the students putting it right in your face, saying, ‘Here are things we think you ought to be addressing.’ ”