Bellville ISD Offers Tips for Creating, Filling Student Board Seat

In 2021, a year after Bellville ISD successfully crafted its mission and strategic action plan designed to create empowering learning experiences for students, officials were seeing positive results — and an opportunity.

The district wanted to drive student success while allowing students to discover and develop their own individual voices, said Nicole Poenitzsch, Bellville ISD superintendent. One place student voice wasn’t present was on the Bellville ISD School Board. So, the district created a seat on its board, allowing a student member to share their input and feedback on issues directly affecting them.

“In 2021, we were reflecting on the successes we were seeing in our classrooms and on our campuses specific to the opportunities that have been created for students to discover and develop their voice — opportunities to lead and communicate effectively,” Poenitzsch said. “And our board asked themselves the questions, ‘How are we contributing to this work? How can we create opportunities that mirror and model what our teachers and campus leaders are doing to turn our words into actions?’”

For districts that wish to create a similar program, Poenitzsch said the process is straight forward and there are simple parameters for creating the role. She offered some detailed information on how Bellville ISD achieved this, which could be helpful for other boards that might be considering adding a student representative to their board.

General Procedures and Guidelines

Because the Education Code states that the board of trustees may act only by majority vote of the members, and a student trustee is not an elected member, the role must be non-voting.

Poenitzsch said the district intentionally set the student seat as a one-year term to allow the opportunity to transfer to a different student each year. The board updated its operating procedures to reflect the addition of the student representative and created a process for fairly selecting them.

Application Process

The application process is open to all students in grades nine through 12, with the preference for juniors and seniors. Because the district had so many qualified candidates, they wanted to make sure students who were closer to graduation had a chance to participate. The application opens in the beginning of March and closes the last Friday in April. Students who apply must:

• Complete a Google form application that includes short answer responses.
• Submit three letters of recommendation.
• Participate in an interview.

Selection process

The candidate interviews take place in a closed session with the board. Each student interview takes about 45 minutes and includes eight questions, which delve into what the student will bring to the role, how they will manage their role and school, what they hope to achieve, and how they will prepare to be a meaningful contributor.

The board conducts the interviews and selection process at its agenda review meeting and then it appoints and swears in the new student with the incoming board members at the regular meeting in May.

Challenges

In the first year of the program, Poenitzsch said the board realized it wasn’t receiving much input from its student representative. There is a cadence and routine that boards get used to, and they weren’t creating intentional opportunities to ask the student, “What do you think about this?” she said. In years two and three of the program, the board started to include a student report in the meeting and ask for student rep feedback prior to voting.

Poenitzsch said that for the first few months of the new school year, prior to agenda review meetings, she walks the student rep through the agenda, to provide them with the background knowledge needed to be prepared and familiar with topics before the meetings when they might be asked for their opinion.

Benefits

For district leadership, having a student on the board has been a beneficial addition because it allows them to have student voice right in the room where they are making decisions that affect teachers and students, she said.

“Having a student representative really allows you to stay connected to that perspective, and stay connected to the impact of our decisions,” she said.