PUSD School Board Student Representative Nirja Trivedi (12) represented the district in a training workshop for student board representatives in San Francisco, Nov. 30-Dec. 2. While there, Trivedi learned from other board representative students about how their solutions are constantly changing to unique situations.
Trivedi went to the conference to gain confidence in herself crafting and proposing ideas for solutions to district problems or changes she wants to make.
During the conference, Trivedi said that the people she met and took ideas from helped her understand that it is necessary for her to find those district wide problems and get rid of them. She also learned that many problems need to be fixed internally within a single school, as many times the problems are just too small-scale and unique for the changes to be made districtwide.
“Those include things like voter registration where we want to register more high schools to register to vote in 2024 or things like our sustainability efforts where there have been a lot of complaints about our recycling not actually going into recycling,” Trivedi said. “I’m helping the custodial department in launching a pilot recycling program in the coming months. It’s already launched at Oak Valley and a few other schools.”
The conference also led her to find it important to find her own solutions instead of following paths of other people or districts. For example many would look upon the districts with solutions that work for them while the conference would lead her to ensure she would find her own.“It was really eye-opening for me to see that I have a big responsibility in that I am one person representing 36,000 students when there are student board members [from other districts] only representing [around] 800 students,” Trivedi said. “I felt like I have a significant responsibility as a student board member representing PUSD there.”
While other districts have multiple representatives for fewer than 20,000 people, Trivedi’s job is unique in the sense that she was a singular representative for a district of 41 schools. Trivedi had to ensure the changes she made worked for all schools and not just a few of the schools in PUSD.
Trivedi also learned that many problems in the area cannot be dealt with currently and are more long term goals that can’t be solved all at once.
“I was talking to these girls from San Bernardino County,” Trivedi said. “They’ve had a huge issue because sports practices and [extracurriculars] are later into the day. They’re facing increased human trafficking in their districts in the evenings and in the nights because students are getting out later. There isn’t as much supervision at night and they’re more likely to be trafficked and kidnapped.”
Trivedi said she recognized that problem may not be relatable to our district and, as a result, she takes the differences into account when thinking about proposing an idea to prevent something like hours changing if there is no real reason to do so.
“So that’s not something I will be implementing in our district, but something that I’ve been thinking about is drafting my own resolutions because right now on the board, I am kind of just more in a sedentary position,” Trivedi said. “I’m approving things, but I want to take more action and draft my own resolutions to play a more active role on the board.”
Through the time she has been a board representative, Trivedi had hesitance proposing ideas as she wasn’t comfortable as it was a new position for her. This was until she went to the conference. Trivedi found that many things she learned in this experience have positively influenced what she will do in the future.
“It was interesting in terms of professional development to learn about what I might want to pursue after high school,” Trivedi said. “After being a student board member and other things in line with boards of education, education policy and just politics in general which could lead me to take roles in those fields.”
