At its meeting on Monday night, the Everett School Committee voted to allow Student Representative Dyna Louis to become a more active member of the committee.
Louis, who was elected by her high school peers, has been able to comment on many of the items on the agenda, but that has been the extent of her involvement in the proceedings.
But with the unanimous vote of the School Committee on Monday night, Louis will be able to take a much more active role at the meetings. She will be able to introduce and speak on items that she has placed on the agenda, similar to what School Committee members are able to do.
For the past several months, the School Committee has been wrestling with the issue of whether to allow Louis a more active role.
The concern was how Louis would be able to place her items on the agenda. It was decided that Louis be subject to the same rules and deadlines for submitting items on the agenda as School Committee members.
Louis’s first agenda items could appear when the School Committee meets again on May 16.
The committee members wanted to make sure that after Louis graduates, that it was very defined that future Student Representatives strictly follow the same rules in contributing to the agenda as an elected member of the School Committee must follow.
COVID CASES UP
In other news, Superintendent Priya Tahiliani noted that COVID cases following the spring break had a slight uptick with 13 students and five staff testing positive for the COVID-19 virus for the April 25-29 time period.