While attending the Ocean Beach School District board of directors’ special meeting on Feb. 16, I was impressed when school board members expressed their desire to increase student voice in their decision-making process. I expressed my appreciation to the board at their Feb. 22 regular board meeting and encouraged them to broaden their student input opportunities by creating annual student linkage meetings in each of the schools so they could hear directly from students regarding their educational experience.

I then asked the board members if student voice is important to their decision-making process (which it is), how then were they intentionally working to gain the voice of staff, parents, and other community members (the voters)? I encouraged them to also create annual linkage meetings for these stakeholders to gain their perspectives in an open two-way conversation. The current process limits input to just three minutes during a regular board meeting (board members are not supposed to respond to the speaker), which is very limiting and often frustrating.

School board members are elected by the citizens of the district and serve as our representatives to oversee the effectiveness of the community-owned school system. I hope to soon be able to attend another school board meeting and share my appreciation for their efforts to gain meaningful and regular feedback from all stakeholder groups, including students, staff, parents, and community members.

Dr. MARK MANSELL

Ocean Park