PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Two high school seniors have officially taken their seats as the new student members of the Philadelphia School Board.
This year’s student representatives are Sophia Roach from the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, and Love Speech from Kensington Creative and Performing Arts High School.
They can’t vote on board resolutions, but they do provide a student voice during deliberations. At last week’s installation ceremony, Mayor Jim Kenney said the students will serve an invaluable role in holding the board accountable.
“Our student board representatives play an integral role in this process, ensuring that the voices of students across the district are, in fact, heard,” Kenney said. “We can’t improve the quality of our schools without hearing directly from the young people who attend them every single day.”
Roach told the board that during her one-year term, she wants to be an advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion.
“I applied to be a student representative because I wanted to be meaningfully involved in systems that create systemic change for over 200,000 students within the district who deserve to be truly heard and not just seen through demographic data and standardized test scores,” she said.
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Patricia McDermott, principal of Kensington CAPA, said her teachers describe Speech as a student with “high personal and academic standards, a strong moral compass, and a drive to help others.”
In her first board meeting, Speech contributed to the board’s discussion on standardized tests, saying versions of similar questions often appear.
“You will end up getting usually the same questions. And it definitely does come down to memory,” Speech said. “So it feels like less of a test of your ability and more of memorization.”
Roach and Speech represent the fifth pair of students to serve as youth members of the school board. They were chosen from among 21 qualified applicants.
Superintendent Tony Watlington, who interviewed the five finalists, called Roach and Speech “passionate and dedicated individuals.”
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