School board appoints 3 students to give input

The Shawano School Board couldn’t decide which two of the three Shawano Community High School students would be best suited to serve as advisory board members, so they opted Nov. 14 to bring all three aboard.

The policy only allows for two student board members to sit on the board at a given time, but the board voted to waive the policy requirement in the hopes of getting all three involved. Without identifying the three students — Ania Hoffman, Riley Dreier and Madeline Schroth — during the meeting, the board voted to bring all three into the fold in the hopes of getting more input when it makes policy decisions that affect students.

Student representatives on the board will be able to engage in debates in open sessions, but they’re not allowed to participate in closed sessions, nor can they vote on matters.

Hoffman said she wanted to sit on the board in order to be better informed, pointing out the difficult times the board went through earlier this year when decisions made by former Superintendent Randi Anderson were called into question.

“Last year, I heard a lot about what was going on with the school board, and I genuinely had no idea what was going on,” Hoffman said. “I thought that, as a senior in the high school I’ve been at for four years, I should probably know what’s going on and have a voice in my school.”

Dreier told the board that students need to have a voice in the way the schools are run, and she thought she could best be that voice. She commented that the district’s requirement to take courses in personal finance was one of the board’s better decisions because it prepares students for the real world.

“I think it’s really important for students to be able to give their opinions on the decisions being made in school because it’s our education. We’re the ones being impacted by the decisions,” Dreier said.

Schroth sees the opportunity to be on the board as a way to make a difference. She’s already been involved with district policies as a student representative on the stakeholder committee that examined potential referenda for the Shawano School District.

“I really like being involved in things because I think it helps me to learn more about how things work, especially in the real world, and it allows me to make deeper connections,” Schroth said.

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com