Students are taking a seat at the table
October 23, 2024 at 10:37 p.m.
Two new faces had a seat at the table during the last Port Chester Board of Education meeting on Oct. 17. Their expertise to bring to the discussion? The student perspective.
It was a full circle situation for Board President Chrissie Onofrio. Port Chester High School senior Katherine Balbin and junior Sheyly Poroj joined that night for their first meeting as student liaisons to the school board, a position Onofrio held when she was a high schooler in the district over two decades ago.
“It’s definitely a flashback for me,” Onofrio said. “But I think it’s really exciting. It’s so important for young people to have that empowerment and feel like they have a voice. And now sitting on the other side, I think it’s important for us to hear from them. They’re the ones in the classroom on a day-to-day basis.”
The Port Chester School District is a step ahead of the game.
Soon, all Boards of Education in New York will be mandated to appoint a student ex-officio member. The law, sponsored by State Senator Shelley Mayer, was signed by Governor Kathy Hochul in September and will go into effect July 1, 2025.
Previously, districts were allowed to appoint student members, but voters had to approve the position through a referendum to do so. The new law removes that barrier and gives districts flexibility in how students will be selected.
Though the high schoolers won’t have a vote, they will have a voice in discussions. And advocates for the law have cited that voice as crucial in a rapidly changing world where the youth experience differs from that of most board members making policy decisions that affect them.
“Mandates can be tricky sometimes, when it’s a blanket statement. Because every board and district have to figure out what works best for them,” Onofrio noted. And Blind Brook Board of Education President Jeffrey Mensch shared the sentiment.
But the spirit behind the new law—encouraging student voice and engagement when decisions are being made for them—is inarguably well-intended, they agreed. It will just depend on individual communities to see how it will play out.
BBHS: A conduit for advocacy
While the Blind Brook School District has yet to implement a policy about student participation on the Board of Education, the significance of the position is not lost on the students—particularly those in Congress.
Creating a student ex-officio member naturally aligns with the interest of Student Congress at Blind Brook—they’re a body elected by their peers to proactively address issues by focusing on and advocating for policy.
“The Board of Education does a good job of listening to student voice and representing the interest of the students,” said senior Josh Montvelisky, Student Congress president. “But there’s always room for improvement.”
They’ve successfully pushed for policies that the Board of Education has signed off on, such as removing the mental health block period during the day which students found to be counterproductive, or keeping “remote Wednesdays” intact during the hybrid years of COVID-19. Currently, grade transparency is a key priority.
“It wouldn’t be our first collaboration,” said Congress Vice President Charlotte Zelin, a senior. A Board of Education member is always present at Congress sessions, and “we host a Board of Education breakfast once a year where we talk about the most prominent student issues. It’s usually our most productive session. So, I think it would be interesting to have that conversation directly between the students and board throughout the year.”
“We bring in a Board of Education representative to sit in on our meetings, but we haven’t really returned the favor,” Montvelisky added. “That’s something we tried to work on last year, we attempted to introduce policy that one congress advisor goes to a Board of Education meeting as a spectator. So, it’s now interesting to see it brought in at the state level.”
Frankly, as he alluded to, the students believe the position should have been implemented a long time ago—it’s intuitive, they said, because of the overlap of interests. Students should be involved in the budgeting process, because sometimes they feel resources aren’t being directed toward the programs that need them. Similarly, they’d like to see their interests voiced during curriculum discussions.
Blind Brook High School Student Congress members Abby Goldstein, Josh Montvelisky, Hailey Mallah and Charlotte Zelin believe having a student representative serving on the Board of Education will be a valuable conduit between advocates and decision makers.Courtesy of Josh Montvelisky
The benefit of having a student board member should be seen as a two-way street, stressed senior Abby Goldstein, the Congress parliamentarian. Beyond giving trustees a relevant perspective to consider, it would help bridge the gap between the youth and adults making decisions.
“There’s a lot of things discussed during board meetings that students don’t know about, so it would increase transparency,” she said. “There’s also been times where Congress has all these conversations about something we want to change, and then we find out we can’t change something or it’s not an appropriate solution because of limitations of the board. Knowing more about how our school runs and what our limitations are will be very helpful.”
In turn, if the students are aware of issues facing the district, particularly when a community vote is needed, they can communicate those concerns to their peers to pass along to parents.
“It would be constructive for Congress to have real time input on what the Board of Education is considering. And it would be deeply constructive for the Board of Education to have real time input on what Congress is considering,” Montvelisky echoed. “This is important because it’s another route to action. Generally, we have a lot of great discussions, but we sometimes struggle to turn that into real action. So, having political power to do that will be very helpful.”
Given the nature and mission of Student Congress, the representatives firmly believe that when a student ex-officio member joins the board next year, it should be someone from their group.
It shouldn’t be a student handpicked by the administration, Zelin said. “Congress members are elected, and I think the student should be elected,” she said, “because Board of Education members are as well.”
PCHS a step ahead of the game
Balbin and Poroj were anxious in the days leading up to their first Board of Education meeting, but equally excited.
“I’m nervous, I don’t know what to expect,” Balbin said during a chat on the Tuesday before the meeting. “It’s a new experience, so that’s always going to be nerve wracking. But I’m very excited. I really want to know how the administration process works.”
“We’re very student centered here; we’ve always said that is the piece, that student voice,” said Port Chester High School Assistant Principal Diantha Barone. “So, when (Superintendent Dr. Aurelia Henriquez) asked for this, we’re like, ‘yes, yes and thank you!’”
Creating student liaison positions had been a discussion at Port Chester Schools for a few months. Onofrio said it was a continuation of their goal to incorporate more student voice into the decision-making process—a newfound focus over the last few years—and the governor’s mandate, while on their radar, also happened to align.
This year, administrators started visiting Port Chester High School classrooms to talk to students about the opportunity and pass out interest forms, Barone said. A handful of staff members analyzed over 40 student applications over Columbus Day weekend; she said it was a more popular initiative than they had anticipated.
“They wrote 250-word statements that basically said why they want the position, and the responses we received, they were amazing,” she said. “Every single one of them was rich with their own perspective of why this was important. Some of them were about how this was something similar to what they wanted to do in the future, or others were like, ‘I have generation after generation living in Port Chester and I want to continue to see Port Chester thrive.’”
Balbin and Poroj were selected because of their ambition.
“I wanted to show that I’m a leader, and this shows how I can advocate for students in the school and give more insight on the student perspective,” said Balbin, who wants to study law after she graduates. “I feel like all our teachers do very well, but if we give student perspective, they’ll be more informed about what to do, what to implement and what to initiate.”
“We’re not going to get a vote, but we’ll have a voice in what’s happening,” added Poroj. “I decided to apply because I’ve been looking into maybe being a teacher, so this will give me the experience to see how it all works together. But it’s also to give opinions about what students think of what’s going on in the district.”
The high schoolers are not official student members, but at this point are considered liaisons—they’ll only be attending a few meetings this school year. Onofrio said the structure may change as the district learns from this year and after the state mandate takes effect.
The students are in the early stages of brainstorming how to get their peers involved with their work—to collect feedback about concerns and how to distribute the information they glean from meetings back to the school community. “We can help students understand why the district takes the positions that they do,” Balbin said. “Because some people don’t understand, but they complain, and maybe we can help them understand why things are happening that will help us or keep us safe.”
Both, while still researching, are approaching the position with intention. There’s a time and a place to bring up issues, Balbin said, but they expressed similar concerns they’d like to bring up over scheduling issues that make it difficult for some students to guarantee a lunch break and school spirit.
However, it’s equally important to them to communicate what they think the district is doing well so the school board knows which values matter to continue. For example, Balbin said the district offers great resources for low-income students, which is critical in the Port Chester community.
“It’s a great district overall,” Poroj said. “I went to JFK, and the school wasn’t really pretty, but I had really good memories, good experiences and good teachers. That’s a really good thing about our district, and that’s why I want voice, so the elementary kids get to have an experience like I did, or even better.”
The pros and cons
The benefit of student voice in decision-making is overt.
“It’s really important to have student representation if you’re talking about issues regarding students,” Goldstein said. “At our meetings, if we’re talking about an issue like with gym class, we’ll invite the gym teachers. If they’re talking about issues pertaining to students, it’s important to have a student there.”
Though, as Blind Brook Board President Mensch described, there may be unintended consequences to the new state mandate.
The last few years, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic, have been unprecedently politically divisive. And across the country, national tensions have trickled into the public comment portions of Board of Education meetings.
While Port Chester and Blind Brook schools haven’t had an episode of note, headlines about meetings getting violent due to outrage over mask mandates circulated in the 2020-21 school year. And more recently, school board sessions have gone viral due to book banning debates or residents spewing negative rhetoric about the LGBTQ community.
“I’m less concerned about that at Blind Brook. Our meetings aren’t that exciting. But other boards that have more confrontational community meetings are concerned,” Mensch said. “There are districts that have seen White supremacists show up. If they have a student sitting there, and people show up and say ridiculous things, it’s not great to have kids exposed to that.”
There’s also a matter, philosophically, about whether it’s the place of the state to control the way districts go about getting student input. Equating it to the potentially looming cell phone ban New York State is considering, “I think a lot of this stuff should be dealt with locally,” he said.
“I think having student input is a really good idea. And learning what they want and how we as administrators and a Board of Education can help them in that journey, we want that,” he said. “I’m all for student input, and it has to be done in the best way possible. It’s not quite clear that the state telling you it has to be in this way is the best answer.”
There’s work to be done. Mensch said it’ll be tricky determining how to select a student for service—choosing one to represent the majority is no easy task—but conversations will surely begin soon.
Ultimately, he thinks it’ll be good for Blind Brook Schools to have a student learning more about the Board of Education process. And Onofrio has firsthand experience suggesting that’s true.
When Onofrio was in high school, she served as the Board of Education liaison as an affiliate of the Student Senate. While she didn’t sit on the dais, she was present in the audience and would often get up during public comment periods. She has fond memories of those days.
“For me, what stands out the most are the things I advocated for,” she said. “I remember talking about the high school track, it was a cinder track, and we couldn’t field a team. And also, a nine-period day at the high school. We had an eight-period day at the time, and some kids didn’t have lunch period.”
“There was a need that wasn’t just for me, but for the greater student body. And going to meetings, I’d kind of hound them and tell them what I thought,” she laughed.
Though she didn’t appreciate it fully at the time, growing up made her realize how impactful those experiences were. It taught her at an early age that her voice matters, and she could make a difference.
Comments:
You must login to comment.