Juniors Lola Akinlade, Ellie Daly, Zachary Ford and were recently selected to be the LHS student representatives for the District 128 school board for the 2017-18 school year.
At monthly school board meetings, student representatives are responsible for presenting news that “you couldn’t read about on Twitter” about LHS students, explained current representative Emily Regan in an interview.
Daly expressed her excitement in an interview, saying that “I think it’s a really important position, to have a student on the school board. If I value it that much, I might as well try to be that student.” She hopes to make students’ voices heard by the board, so as to prevent the school board from forgetting students’ concerns in new policies or decisions.
Seniors Spencer Baumruk and Daniel Oh along with Regan, a junior, were the representatives for the 2016-17 school year. The three members came from various backgrounds, according to Regan, with Baumruk providing insight about theater, choir and sports at LHS; Oh bringing forth information about orchestra, various sports and clubs; and Regan, who is involved in many academic clubs. Daly hopes to bring a new voice to the school board, as she is involved in Erika’s Lighthouse and National Honor Society, and works at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.
During April’s meeting, the representatives discussed the art award that was presented to Nate Sweitzer, Representative Brad Schneider’s visit to AdvoCats and the WYSE victory at state, according to Regan. Oh added that student representatives really get the opportunity to brag about what outsiders may not know about LHS students. Since most of the community members who attend the meetings don’t usually get to spend a lot of time at LHS, the representatives act as a bridge between the students and the board members who make decisions for them.
In addition to monthly meetings, representatives meet for lunch with Superintendent Dr. Prentiss Lea, Principal Dr. Marina Scott and other administration members at Baker’s Square, in order to discuss what’s happening in District 128 schools and the surrounding communities.
Regan also shared that she finds special interest in the public commentary that happens after all regular board business that needs to be taken care of at each meeting. She explained that “there’s some people that just love the school board and they stand up and are like ‘Thank you for what you do. Thank you, this is awesome,’ and then there’s other people who will come up and accuse the school board of bid rigging and illegal activity and say that they’re so mad at the budget and accuse the school board of incompetency. It’s just interesting to see that contrasting viewpoint and to see how the school board handles and responds to that.”
Oh echoed Regan’s sentiment, remarking how Libertyville is full of more diverse opinions than students are usually exposed to. Debates about budget and diversity among teachers have been brought forth to Oh, and he commented on the fact that at LHS, he believes that students are sheltered from negative opinions about our school.
Oh explained that he finds that “we have an incredible opportunity to do so well in Libertyville because we have so many resources, we have so many amazing teachers and all these things. I’ve seen the statistics in which ACT scores for LHS and Vernon Hills have been rising every year, the amount of kids taking AP classes and being able to succeed in those and do really well is increasing, and just being able to see the progress is really impressive.”
