Public school is the top place most Americans satisfy democracy. It is likewise, for practically all of them, the last location they experience it without a vote. School boards are chosen by grownups, staffed by adults and run for grownups. They make decisions every week about structures loaded with young people who get no say.
That is starting to alter, and the modification is not working out in some places.
Consider what occurred last month in Washington County, Tennessee. A trainee at David Crockett High School had just questioned her superintendent about middle school consolidation, profession and technical education and graduation objectives when board member Keith Ervin, several years her senior, pulled her versus him on cam.
“God, you’re hot,” he said. “Do you know that?”
The superintendent and the board chair laughed. Nobody stepped in. The conference carried on. Days later, the board unanimously voted to censure Ervin, the 2nd time he has been censured for misconduct toward students. He has actually not resigned.
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Tennessee began needing most districts to seat student members on school boards in an advisory, nonvoting capacity this year. The trainee who asked those concerns was doing exactly what the role was designed to do. The grownups around her were not satisfying their roles.
This is what it looks like when a country adds young people to spaces where decisions get made without very first preparing the adults in those rooms to share power.
Student school board members aren’t brand-new. In 1975, a sixteen-year-old called Anthony Arend was amongst the first student school board members with ballot rights in the nation, seated in Maryland’s Anne Arundel County Public Schools after lobbying state lawmakers himself. For decades, the practice spread slowly. That is changing quickly.
Currently, more than 33 U.S. states have laws that enable boards to consist of trainee members. As my associates and I detailed in 2015, 14 percent of the 495 largest U.S. school districts have trainees on school boards, and more than 400 trainees are currently serving on state advisory councils or boards of education. According to a casual tally kept by the National Trainee Board Member Association, which among us co-founded, roughly 1,500 student members now serve on school boards, representing more than 20 million trainees. New York passed a law in 2024 needing a trainee position on every school board with a high school. Minnesota, Nebraska and Vermont have presented similar legislation.
Related: STUDENT VOICE: School boards are a vital piece of democracy. That’s why trainees need to be on them
This should be peaceful excellent news for anybody anxious about American democracy. Granting seats to trainees treats youths as individuals in their own governance, not simply its subjects. Self-government should be practiced someplace, and the school district– the civic organization young people already know finest– is an affordable location to start.
In some districts, trainee members are treated as coworkers. In others, as props or, worse, as targets.
When a student member of Maryland’s Howard County Board of Education cast a choosing vote on pandemic school closures in 2020, the response was online harassment, an expense to gut the position and a federal suit. He kept his seat. The lesson: When a student’s voice carries genuine weight, adults push back.
In Alaska’s Mat-Su Borough, a student representative called Ben Kolendo pressed coworkers on how they were hand-picking a library committee. The board removed him of his title, his vote and the majority of his speaking rights, reducing his role to a “short report” at the start of each meeting.
Last month in Hernando County, Florida, board members discussed removing their trainee delegate position due to an Islamophobic social media campaign pestering the trainee board member. The student member disagreed: “As the trainee representative who was assaulted, I do not believe that removing this function would do anything positive.”
These minutes are tension tests, exposing how grownups react when trainees move from symbolic participation to real governance.
But reaction is not the only story. Mac Duis of the University of Lynchburg studied 68 documented school board meetings throughout 12 Virginia districts– six with student members, 6 without. Boards with a trainee at the table had less confrontational exchanges and more civil ones.
Why does trainee presence on school boards sometimes provoke a reaction and other times promote civility? We believe it is not just about the trainee, but also the conditions under which that trainee works out power. Too many school boards add trainees without supporting the role.
Related: COLUMN: How trainee school board members are driving climate action
Go back to Tennessee. The Washington County board that chuckled has 4 student members on paper. Just one sits on the dais at a time, in an advisory, unsettled, nonvoting role, appointed by the principal, with no required training.
Districts major about this function know what it needs: trainee elections, yearlong terms of workplace, district-funded training, voting power and securities for minors sharing a dais with grownups twice their age.
As the Washington County trainee representative argued, districts with trainee agents should adopt policies that require board members to be trained in “sexual attack and appropriate conduct.”
The stakes are bigger than any single district. For a lot of Americans, the school board is the last democratic organization they watch up close before losing interest completely. If the only lesson we teach youths is that adults will laugh when among them gets struck on, or that the student vote will be removed as quickly as a student asks a hard concern, they will draw the apparent conclusion and stop getting involved.
Trainee members will not fix American school governance. But early research recommends that boards that include a student can invest less time combating amongst themselves and more time talking about the trainees they serve.
For years, we have offered young people ceremonial titles and asked to prepare dances. It is previous time to ask to help run the organization. If school districts aren’t going to provide student board members genuine power, they must not develop these positions at all. Otherwise, they run the risk of leaving youths even less positive in the democracy we will inherit.
A nonvoting seat turned monthly and handed out by the superintendent is not representation. It is a photo op.
Andrew Brennen is a third-year student at Columbia Law School and holds a master’s degree in education policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is the co-founder of the Kentucky Trainee Voice Group. Zachary Patterson co-founded the National Student Board Member Association after acting as a student member of the San Diego Unified School District Board of Education. He is a trainee at Duke University.
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