The Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) board unanimously approved a new policy to incorporate a student member as part of the governance board, beginning in January.
The district has historically had different students attend board meetings as a “student board member” to update the board on the activities and accomplishments of their respective schools. The student would typically stay only for the first portion of the meeting and then be free to leave.
The policy was approved with the promise of changing the language around training and onboarding as well as further fleshing out some aspects of the implementation process. Superintendent Jill Baker will provide further implementation information in future board meetings.
With this new policy, the district is hoping to create a more permanent and involved role for students. The implementation of the policy would involve training and onboarding a selected student to participate and attend the entirety of the board meetings and offer a student perspective.
Though the student cannot actually vote on an item, they will be able to give a “preferential vote” to showcase their thoughts and perspectives on an item before the official vote.
The policy stems from the district’s shift to a more student-focused meeting format, where items have been synthesized and are approved as part of a consent calendar—as opposed to discussed individually—to allow for more time for discussion.
“It’s really an opportunity to take our concept of student’s voice and think about how we build student voice literally into the governance team,” Baker said.
Some of the student member’s roles and responsibilities would include:
- Attending all board meetings and receiving access to all open session documents and information
- Being appointed to subcommittees of the board
- Being invited to attend functions of the board such as forums, meetings with students and parents/guardians, etc.
According to the policy, the student board member may receive elective course credit for service at the board’s discretion, but will not receive any sort of monetary compensation outside of mileage reimbursement.
The student board member will be elected with consultation of the board president and the superintendent from “a pool of students who have been elected to a leadership position by their peers” according to Baker.
“The policy is written so that there’s some flexibility, [the student board member] can be appointed on a monthly, semester or annual basis,” Baker said.
Board member Juan Benitez welcomed the idea and principle of this student opportunity, and said he wanted to be conscious of including different demographics of students.
“It would be important for us to be intentional that usually our elected students are the most engaged, the highest achieving and the most plugged in,” Benitez said. “How would we consider…[a student] who may not be in that elected position yet or been previously in a position of leadership but has that promise?”
According to the draft timeline presented by Baker, the selection process, training and onboarding are set to occur in the fall, while the induction of the new student board member will occur in January.
“I think this is one of those things we need to jump and get students involved because we’ll learn a lot in the process and then we can make amendments to the policy,” board president Megan Kerr said.
