Northern Illinois students bring their opinions to school boards

Jenna Zimmerman presents the students’ concerns to her colleagues on the school board.

“Another point was that bathroom soaps and paper towels are not often refilled,” she said. “Another point that was raised was an unbalanced rating system.”

She is a junior at DeKalb High School—she will be entering her senior year next year—and is the second member of her district’s student school council.

She is the link between the elected board and nearly 7,000 students from kindergarten through high school. When you think about it, she represents more people than some mayors.

The concerns she brought to the school board—such as access to bathrooms, unfair dress codes, and a test-heavy grading system—are issues you hear at many schools. But they aren’t always taken seriously enough to make it to the school board. That’s Jenna’s job.

“There are so many students who want to make a difference,” Zimmerman said, “and I feel like they just don’t know where to start.”

In some ways, she is the voice of DeKalb students. But in a district this large and diverse, it’s almost impossible to hear everyone and speak on behalf of everyone.

One way she tries to give a voice to students who want change is by holding “Speak Outs” where students from all schools are invited to talk about the challenges they face. That’s how she got the answers she presented. She also set up a “mini” board of peers, asked teachers for recommendations, posted them on school diplomas, and started an Instagram page to reach out.

“I selected a certain number of seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshmen,” Zimmerman said, “to make sure that the number of people actively coming to the mini-board meetings is roughly equal.”

Last year they had about 20 students and hope to get to 40 next year to have a more representative sample. They also need to continue to build trust and raise awareness so that students know they can go to their student representatives with their concerns.

DeKalb is not the only school district with student advisory board members. Rockford Public Schools has a student advisory board made up of about a dozen students from all of the district’s high schools.

Jessica Garcia is a recent graduate of Auburn High School. She has served on the school board for the past two years. Her school has academies, and the academy for “gifted” students always has the strongest representation on the board. But, she thought, what about the others? What about the students who aren’t in every club or sport?

“I felt like it was really important to improve the experiences of students who are not ‘top performing’ students,” she said. “There are other students who are not like that, and they deserve to have their voices represented as well.”

And what about younger students? Student council members are almost always high school students. The voices of elementary and middle school students are often not heard or taken seriously.

Garcia says one way they try to hear the opinions of these children is through a mentoring program for fifth-grade students. They have also applied for a grant to buy books for elementary school students.

“How can we engage younger students?” Garcia asked. “What is the problem that many children are facing right now? It’s reading. Reading scores are insanely low.”

Back in DeKalb, Zimmerman says she visited both middle schools last year to talk to students and hopes to invite middle and elementary school students to small board meetings next year.

The Aurora West School District has had student representatives on the school board for nearly 20 years.

Ellie Rogowski is a member of the Student Council. She says her district has built an infrastructure to help students and staff know their student representatives. For example, in civics class, they do an assignment where they research and write up all of their representatives, starting with Congress.

“At the bottom of that table,” Rogowski said, “they had to research and find out who their representatives were on the student council.”

Jenna Zimmerman of DeKalb says they brought many important issues before the board last year, such as adding new AP classes and reinstating the mandatory study hour. Those discussions will continue into next year, but they have had some big wins. They pushed the initiative for a new lunch program.

“I think that led to the change in the school program,” she said, “because the mini-board also allowed us to send some students to different schools to try out the different programs they would use the next year.”

In her last board meeting as a member in Rockford, Jessica Garcia spoke about violence in teen relationships and a new law in the state of Illinois that corrects some language regarding students’ right to a safe learning environment.

“I think,” she said, “it’s really important to hear these first-hand testimonies to bring about change.”

Such conversations can be very powerful. When schools say they want to hear their students’ honest opinions, students say that schools need to be willing to listen to things that might be hard to hear – but still give them the space to share.