'It's on us to fight': the student climate activist energizing a US school board

[cbabe]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/oct/07/school-boards-student-climate-activist-shiva-rajbhandari

‘It’s on us to fight’: the student climate activist energizing a US school board

Shiva Rajbhandari is the first student elected to a school board in Idaho as boards nationwide become increasingly politicized

Shiva Rajbhandari is championing mental health and climate activism, providing a rare student voice on an Idaho school board.

Maanvi Singh
@maanvissingh
Fri 7 Oct 2022 06.00 EDT

Shiva Rajbhandari wasn’t even of legal voting age when he decided to take on a 47-year-old incumbent on the Boise school board. The high school senior turned 18 days before election day last month – and won.

The young climate activist ran against Steve Schmidt, who was endorsed by the far-right Idaho Liberty Dogs, a local group agitating to ban books from the public library that contained LGBTQ+ themes. The group also planned an armed protest at Rajbhandari’s high school after a student was suspended for bringing a gun near campus.

…

It was frustrating because it just felt like we weren’t getting the time of day from our school board members. In the fall last year, I sent a letter to our school board president detailing our efforts and asking him for a meeting. And I didn’t get a response. But I knew that he had read the letter because about a week later, I was called into my school principal’s office and reprimanded for reaching out directly to the trustees.

…

I remember one time, I walked into English class and half of our assignment was blacked out in Sharpie. And it wasn’t because the assignment had anything to do with critical race theory. It was because our teacher had been intimidated by the rhetoric coming from the highest levels of our government. The assignment was about the civil rights movement.

In a neighboring school district, four books were banned from school libraries, including three books that were on the advanced placement literature and composition curriculum.

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When you were 16, you and your fellow students also directly confronted Idaho’s lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, about the taskforce she had set up to “examine indoctrination in Idaho education”. Tell us more about that.

Everyone knew the taskforce’s allegations were just made up. And they never allowed public comment until the last taskforce meeting, which took place once school was in session.

So we had to miss a little school to show up. It felt really empowering to have my peers there with me and to kind of be this representative for students across the state, standing up to what was happening. But it was really frustrating because you could tell that these people really had a lot of contempt for public schools as a whole.

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And then, supporting teachers against these extremist attacks, and making sure they have freedom to teach as they think is best, and feel respected. My teachers have really given me the world – they are the reason I felt so empowered.

…more…

[SheltieLover]

1. Academic Freedom must be protected from rwnjs!

Good for these students!!!

[Wounded Bear]

2. Indeed! nt

[SheltieLover]

3. ...

[CrispyQ]

4. I love this kid!

As students, we are the primary stakeholders here – this is our education. But we were being told we didn’t belong in places where decisions about our education were being made. And so by the end of that meeting, I knew I wanted to run for the school board.

What a great story!