We commend the Sedona-Oak Creek School District for including a student representative on the Governing Board.
While the student will not have a vote — nor by extension will they be elected by the general public — they will have a voice for student affairs on the school board.
Enrolled students have a unique perspective that the teachers, support staff and administrators at a school do not. Adults view the world much differently than do teenagers
For teens, school is often their entire world outside of home life. It’s why Hollywood coming-of-age films focus so much on high school age experiences. Those final years in school are perhaps the most formative for our later years. What happens at school has as much real-world impact as anything adults do.
More than a decade ago, I served a four-year term on the city of Sedona’s Child & Youth Commission, with two years as chairman. That was back when the city had a Child & Youth Commission, before it was unceremoniously disbanded by a former mayor who had grander plans for a multi-generational commission that never came to exist.
The seven-member commission consisted of three adults, three teens and a seventh seat that could be filled by either a teen or an adult. Our main purpose was to give the city council and its leadership perspective on how city policies and activities were affecting the city’s youth.
Much of that time was focused on trying to get more teens to the Sedona Teen Center, which is now known as the Sedona Posse Grounds Hub facility adjacent to the Jack Malmgren Memorial Skate Park.
Teen commissioners pointed out numerous problems with the facility that we adults could theorize and debate, but that teens knew firsthand from their experiences. Built too far from Sedona Red Rock High School, teens without cars weren’t going to walk miles to go there and without their friends, teens with cars weren’t going either. Because it was a very short distance from West Sedona School, teens also felt like a space used by middle schoolers and younger children simply wasn’t for them even though many did go to the adjacent skate park.
While the commission became moot when it was disbanded, the teen members did provide the city with valuable input on what concerned them. Likewise, we assume the SOCSD teen representative will also present to the board valuable information about their concerns.
Other cities in the Verde Valley have a teen group that is less structured than a formal commission, which gets teens together to share their ideas with city leadership.
Teens chosen for this new seat on the school district Governing Board will become young leaders in the school community, a person whom other students can talk to about their problems with either the high school or SOCSD policies and priorities, and then the student representative can bring those concerns to the board for discussion, making the district more responsive to the needs of the students they serve.
We trust that Governing Board President Randy Hawley, Vice President Lauren Robinson and Assistant Superintendent Deana DeWitt will work with Superintendent Dennis Dearden and the rest of the SOCSD Governing Board to address student concerns.
Whomever the panel chooses, we hope that they learn from the experience and serve their fellow students well.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
