The Jackson County School Board has adopted a new policy allowing a student to join the board when school resumes next month.
The addition comes after a legislative directive in this year’s session. Director of Schools Jason Hardy said the student member must be a junior or senior in good academic standing.
“It’s just one person, and they would join us, they would join you guys, and they would be here for the discussions,” Hardy said. “They can kind of update us on what’s going on in the school system for a student’s view. But they wouldn’t be a voting member, and there’s a list of some things they wouldn’t be involved in. For the most part, they would be a non-voting member of this board.”
Hardy said he hopes to have multiple interested students interested in joining the board, and the student member could be involved in as soon as a few weeks.
“I would like to get them here at the next [meeting],” Hardy said. “That would probably be at the end of August, depending on how we set the meeting. So I would like to get that process started and have them here. And then based on second reading, they’d be good to go.”
Hardy said the student board member must have a clean disciplinary record. Hardy said the board will not be involved in selecting the student member.
“We will allow the administration over there to come up with a process that we feel like is fair to anybody that want to attempt to be that liaison for the school system to have a chance to do it as long as they’ve met that criteria,” Hardy said.
Hardy said there have been some preliminary discussions on the process, but it will not be decided until the next board meeting.
Hardy said the student board member would only need to be involved during the school year, but they could participate in the summer meetings if they would like.