New Westminster’s school board has asked staff to look into holding one education committee meeting during the daytime with hopes of encouraging student involvement in the decision-making process.
Trustee Danielle Connelly, who pushed the motion, said the idea is to encourage even more students to get involved, now that the school district has begun its student trustee program.
This year is the first in which a select group of students from New West Secondary School and various middle schools participate in education committee meetings.
Connelly said the hope with the new motion is to make “the process more approachable for students, so they can see what happens at one of these committee meetings.”
Even for adults, school board or city council meetings may seem intimidating, or people may not know how to get involved – and she hopes this will help break down some of those barriers.
The motion still may not come to fruition, however. The idea has been put to staff to explore options, Connelly said.
Among the issues to be considered, staff will have to look at how best to schedule a meeting to try to encourage student involvement. That could mean students being able to take time from class to view the meeting, including the meeting as part of a social studies class or scheduling the meeting during lunch period or after classes end in the afternoon.
“[We’re] just asking staff to go and put some feelers out and report back if it’s something that there’s an appetite for or desire for,” Connelly said. “Teachers would have to have some involvement in it, as well. It might not be doable, but at least we’re hopefully making an attempt to open the process up even more.”
Staff will report back to school board sometime in the new year with more information, Connelly said.
