The Board of Education is in search of a senior representative from DGN and DGS to serve on the board to bring student perspective to the D99 school board. Principal Janice Schwarze sent an email to the class of 2018 on Aug. 21 with a detailed description of the position and an attached application.

The decision was made by the district in early spring of 2017.

“We are looking for seniors who can understand and entertain other’s perspectives. We can’t have a student who is only presenting his or her own interests. They must represent the student body. This person has to be able to speak up because it will be a student with adults. It can be intimidating, but if you are never sharing your opinion, then we might as well not have you on the board,” Schwarze said.

Board member Michael Davenport believes that a student voice will give the board a new outlook and a larger voice when implementing new administration.

“The student will give us a unique perspective on how policies will be perceived by the student body. I hope they will bring us student concerns, too. As a parent of three current DGS students, I enjoy having student perspective. The student perspective helps me to be more informed and more in touch with what’s going on in our schools,” Davenport said.

Senior Hollis Kerr applied for the position and believes that this addition to the school board will improve communication between students and administration.

“I plan to help connect the board with the student body, so we can discuss ways of improving the school. The student body could also give me some feedback on what concerns they might want me to bring up to the board,” Kerr said.

Senior Isa Chudzik concludes that the student body will now have an outlet to share their voices.

“Now students can’t use the excuse ‘I can’t do anything about it,’ even if you are not personally the student representative. As long as you know who that person is, students have the opportunity to talk to them and tell them what they want the school board to know; hopefully it will make students more active within the school,” Chudzik said.

With recent change of the color of the graduation robes, Chudzik hopes that conversation between administration and students will allow for elaborate discussion.

“I think it is really important that students get represented because in high school, it is really easy to feel helpless. Adults are making the decisions for us in which sometime we have no control over,” Chudzik said.

Students who applied will be interviewed by Schwarze and director of Student Activities Mark Mirandola the week of Sept. 11. A representative will be selected subsequently.