Student power. A month or so back I posted about the question of students on the school board. Today, an interesting follow-up about a student, Pallas Snider, who sits on the school board in a county in Maryland, as written up in the Washington Post.

According to the article,

Anne Arundel is the only county in the nation, education officials say, with a school board that extends full voting rights to a student. When relations deteriorated between the Anne Arundel board and then-Superintendent Eric J. Smith in a series of bitter, closed-door meetings last summer, Snider was there. Her support for the former superintendent and his projects has placed her on the short end of a five-to-three split on the school board, a stance that has not won her much good will from the five-person majority.

"She came into class the other day," recalled Anya Lamb, a friend and classmate at Severna Park High. "We were reading 'Hamlet' in English, and she was like, 'Wow, I just lived Hamlet.' "

Snider is taking up the issue of the starting time for the high schools in the County. School starts at 7:17AM, meaning that many students have to get up before 6AM in order to get to school. The County saves money with the early start time because apparently it needs fewer buses.

This month finds Snider at the center of another looming boardroom drama. She hopes to convince her colleagues that the school system should spend $4 million to open its 12 high schools almost an hour later, at 8 o'clock.

Read the article here...