This past week a bill was filed in the Massachusetts House and Senate to give student representatives voting rights on their local school committees. The Senate bill was filed by Senator Adam Gomez (SD759) and the House bill was filed by Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier (HD2806) with help of the Massachusetts Association of Student Representatives (MASR), which I was a founding group member of. Lets take a look at the bill!
The Current Law: MGL c. 71 sec. 38M
Massachusetts General Law Chapter 71 Section 38M sets the requirements for having student representatives on a local School Committee:
School committees of cities, towns and regional school districts shall meet at least once every other month, during the months school is in session, with a student advisory committee to consist of five members to be composed of students elected by the student body of the high school or high schools in each city, town or regional school district.
The members of such student advisory committees shall, by majority vote prior to the first day of June in each year elect from their number a chairperson who shall serve for a term of one year. Said chairperson shall be an ex-officio, nonvoting member of the school committee, without the right to attend executive sessions unless such right is expressly granted by the individual school committee. Said chairperson shall be subject to all school committee rules and regulations and shall serve without compensation.
A school committee may designate a student outreach coordinator for the purpose of ensuring the establishment of a student advisory committee and regularly informing the advisory committee of the school committee’s agenda.
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXII/Chapter71/Section38M
In short, it regulates that each school committee must have a student advisory committee made up of 5 students (no matter the size of the district), where the “chairperson” of this advisory committee sits on the school committee as a non-voting member without the right to attend executive sessions of the school committee (which school committees have frequently for collective bargaining with teacher unions).
In practice, there are a lot of school committees that:
A. Don’t follow this law and have no student representatives (which is pretty common);
B. Have a student representative that isn’t elected but selected by the school administration in some manner (which was how Pittsfield did it until this past year where elections were implemented);
C. Have a different size advisory committee or have more than 1 representative actually sitting on the School Committee (Pittsfield has all 5 representatives sit on the committee).
Though the proposed changes to this law won’t try to fix all of these issues directly, it will put pressure on the individual School Committees to have elected student representatives in the first place.
The Bill that is Before the Legislature
The bill before the Legislature states the following:
Chapter 71 Section 38M of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2020 official edition, is hereby amended by striking the words “Said chairperson shall be an ex-officio, nonvoting member of the school committee, without the right to attend executive sessions unless such right is expressly granted by the individual school committee. Said chairperson shall be subject to all school committee rules and regulations and shall serve without compensation.” in lines 9 through 14 and inserting in their place the following:
“School committees of cities, towns and regional school districts shall recognize two (2) student representatives, to be elected by the student bodies of all secondary schools within the district, prior to the first day of June in each year. Said representatives shall be allowed to vote on all matters before the committee. Student representatives shall be subject to all school committee rules and regulations, shall serve without compensation, and without the right to attend executive sessions unless such right is expressly granted by the individual school committee.
There shall also be a student advisory committee with members numbered as determined by the district, to be elected by the students of the secondary school or schools within the district. The purpose of said student advisory committee will be to assist the elected student representatives with their regular duties and to assist their constituents with accessing resources as well as connecting students with the student representatives.”
So the amended version of MLG c. 71 sec. 38M would be as follows (note that the striking out portion of the bill is weird as it would cause unnecessary duplicated language in the actual law, but I’m sure that will get fixed as the bill goes through the process):
School committees of cities, towns and regional school districts shall recognize two (2) student representatives, to be elected by the student bodies of all secondary schools within the district, prior to the first day of June in each year. Said representatives shall be allowed to vote on all matters before the committee. Student representatives shall be subject to all school committee rules and regulations, shall serve without compensation, and without the right to attend executive sessions unless such right is expressly granted by the individual school committee.
There shall also be a student advisory committee with members numbered as determined by the district, to be elected by the students of the secondary school or schools within the district. The purpose of said student advisory committee will be to assist the elected student representatives with their regular duties and to assist their constituents with accessing resources as well as connecting students with the student representatives.
A school committee may designate a student outreach coordinator for the purpose of ensuring the establishment of a student advisory committee and regularly informing the advisory committee of the school committee’s agenda.
This bill would make the following changes:
- There would be 2 student representatives that sit on their local School Committee instead of 1;
- These student representatives would have full voting power on the School Committee except they still do not have the right to attend executive session;
- The Student Advisory Committee exists to assist the student representative, not necessarily the School Committee, and the district can determine the size of the advisory committee (which makes sense to me, the size of 5 for the committee always felt out of place to me);
These are some really big changes, especially giving student representatives voting power on their individual school committees, that is big! Voting rights will allow for students to actually be taken seriously by their respective School Committee as they have a full seat at the table. Student representative voting rights, as a former student representative myself, is something that I want to see implemented in this state.
Though not in this bill itself, I would also like to see student representatives have the right to attend executive sessions so that they can be a part of collective bargaining discussions with their district’s teacher unions. They should be a part of this process as they are directly effected by how the negotiations go, not shut out of it.
I will be certainly staying on top of where this bill goes, and will be sure to advocate for the passing of this bill anywhere that I can!
There’s Actually Another Bill that I Didn’t Expect!
That’s right, there is another bill that was filed in the House (HD3537) that I didn’t expect and MASR didn’t help to file that gives student representatives voting rights on their respective school committee!
This bill before the Legislature states the following:
SECTION 1. Section 38m of chapter 71 of the General Laws is hereby amended by striking out in the 2nd paragraph the words :-“ex-officio, non voting member” and replacing them with the word “voting member” .
Further amends Section 38m of chapter 71 “shall serve without compensation”, and replacing them with the “shall receive a scholarship subject to appropriation by the committee at the conclusion of their senior year in recognition of their service to the district. The student representative must complete at least 1 year of full service in order to be eligible. The school committee may provide a partial scholarship to a student representative who does not complete their year of service. The school committee may also determine whether or not to provide a stipend remunerate the student representative for their service to district”
So the amended version of MLG c. 71 sec. 38M would be as follows:
School committees of cities, towns and regional school districts shall meet at least once every other month, during the months school is in session, with a student advisory committee to consist of five members to be composed of students elected by the student body of the high school or high schools in each city, town or regional school district.
The members of such student advisory committees shall, by majority vote prior to the first day of June in each year elect from their number a chairperson who shall serve for a term of one year. Said chairperson shall be an voting member of the school committee, without the right to attend executive sessions unless such right is expressly granted by the individual school committee. Said chairperson shall be subject to all school committee rules and regulations and shall receive a scholarship subject to appropriation by the committee at the conclusion of their senior year in recognition of their service to the district. The student representative must complete at least 1 year of full service in order to be eligible. The school committee may provide a partial scholarship to a student representative who does not complete their year of service. The school committee may also determine whether or not to provide a stipend remunerate the student representative for their service to district.
A school committee may designate a student outreach coordinator for the purpose of ensuring the establishment of a student advisory committee and regularly informing the advisory committee of the school committee’s agenda.
So there are some differences between this bill and the bill MASR helped to file, but the end result would be the same, giving at least one student representative on their School Committee voting power like the other members. As I said previously, this will be a big game changer in the state!
But there are some things that I don’t really like about this bill:
- This bill still keeps the advisory committee of 5 elected students language in law, I feel as though this should also be modified to allow for advisory committees of different sizes to be formed (I still never understood why the Legislature chose making the advisory committee have a size of exactly 5 students);
- Only 1 student representative would have voting power, not 2. From when I was still working with MASR, it was decided preliminary to give 2 student representatives voting power so that a School Committee with an odd number of members (which is most of them) would still have an odd number of members with the 2 new voting student representatives. Under this bill, that school committee would have an even number of members which is undesirable because of there being more potential for tied votes;
- The scholarship provision, which is the biggest draw back for me as having student representatives would now be a cost to a School Committee. Don’t get me wrong I like the idea of giving student representatives some form of compensation for their work, but a lot (and possibly most) School Committees do not compensate their regular members members. For instance, in Pittsfield School Committee members receive $4,000 in compensation, but if we look at a place like Lee their Committee is entirely volunteer as far as I know. So this could cause some pushback from those School Committees as they would not be getting compensated themselves but their student members would. And it could also receive pushback from other School Committees as there now would be a cost to have student members. So I feel as though this provision creates more problems then it solves and could ultimately harm the main purpose of the bill, to give student representatives voting rights;
So those are where my thoughts lie when it comes to this bill. I am personally going to keep pushing for the first bill as I feel as though that is the better bill here and the more likely one to actually get passed in the Legislature. In any case, I am excited to see where these bills takes us in giving student representatives a voting seat at the table!