Riverhead High School student joins the school board; Aug. 27 meeting wrap-up

For the first time, the Riverhead Board of Education has a student representative.

High school senior Annabelle Dunn joined the school board last night for her first meeting as a non-voting member. School district voters authorized a student representative on the board during May’s budget vote and elections, pursuant to state law. 

Dunn is the elected student body president. She is also the elected lieutenant governor for division one of the New York Key Club, treasurer of the high school’s National Honor Society, a member of the World Language Honor Society and is involved in several other clubs and athletic teams.  

“I’m very involved in a lot of clubs, so I have a lot of input already from different people from all of my clubs, whether they’re underclassmen [or] the same age as me,” Dunn said in an interview. “And my dad’s also a teacher at the middle school, so I have input from him too. I want to get all of those inputs and suggestions and share them here when I can.”

Dunn cannot vote on school board resolutions and is not allowed to participate non-public meetings, such as executive sessions, under state law.

Roughly a third of school districts and BOCES have non-voting student board members, according to the New York State School Boards Association, which is pushing for the governor to sign a bill that would make the student representative a requirement. 

Dunn was not chosen by the board, but appointed to the position by her peers, school board president James Scudder said. He said the school board has discussed having a student on the board since last year to have a “line of communication” between the board and students that will help the governing body “make better decisions.” 

“They can just kind of tell us the ins and outs of things that they see going on in the building, things that they hear from the kids, things that they would like to see implemented, stuff like that,” Scudder said. He said he wants the student representatives to be comfortable raising student concerns during a board meeting.

Dunn said she’s most looking forward to “being more involved in the community, knowing what’s going on exactly, and forming my own opinion so that I can help when needed to, to do what’s best for my classmates.”

One issue Dunn hopes to help shape is the district’s Regent’s exam weighting policy. The policy currently counts the state exam as 20% of a student’s final course average, but some in the community have been pushing for the policy to change. When school board members couldn’t decide on how to change the policy, they voted to suspend it for the third year in a row.

“I know being the person who has taken Regents myself, I get tripped up over tests, so I don’t think that they should weigh as much, especially if people did really well during the class,” Dunn said. “So I wouldn’t want that to really affect them. But I’m also excited to explore more on the board, because then I get all of the information and can see everything.”

Also during the Aug. 27 meeting, the school board:

• Approved an extension to the employment contract with Data Processing Systems Coordinator Christopher Amato through Aug. 31.
• Approved two internal audit reports and corrective action plans for the district. 
• Approved multiple contracts for multiple service and equipment.
• Approved contracts with Eastern Suffolk BOCES for student transportation services.
• Approved the following donations: $2,500 grant from Teachers Federal Credit Union won by Allison Fox for ENL classroom supplies; 1,100 backpacks with supplies for children from Supplies for Success; 200 backpacks with supplies for district students from the Jewish Center of the Hamptons; 40 backpacks with supplies for Phillips Avenue Elementary School students from Chase Bank; a $50 Target gift card from Tara Spinella to be used to help furnish the high school courtyard with an umbrella.