St. Paul schools to bring back student advisory group

A year after being silenced, the St. Paul Public Schools Student Engagement and Advancement Board (SEAB) is poised for a revival.

The St. Paul school board announced recently it plans to reinstate the often influential group — designed to amplify the voices of students — during the coming school year.

To help make it happen, the board has posted a job for a new facilitator who will help the students navigate the state's second-largest district.

Until last year, SEAB had been known for influencing board action in matters ranging from the way students decorate graduation gowns to the presence of police in the schools. But the school board opted not to name a new cohort in 2021-22, opening it to criticism at a time when schools were being targeted for closure in the Envision SPPS redesign.

Students at individual schools such as LEAP High did turn up to speak out — ultimately helping to save three buildings from being shuttered this fall. But seats that had been set aside for SEAB members at past board meetings were empty.

Board Vice Chair Jessica Kopp said this week that a board subcommittee tasked with guiding SEAB's future needed time to review frustrations aired by the most recent 2020-21 cohort in order to provide a "strong, fresh start" to the next group of students.

Among those concerns was the district's alleged failure to find a suitable replacement for the facilitator who helped launch SEAB in 2015.

Jerome Treadwell, a student leader who graduated this year from Highland Park High, said this week that the district owes it to students to not only welcome input through SEAB, but also to give them voting power during school board deliberations.

"After two years of suppressing student voices in the most critical time our nation has seen since the beginning of 'Gen Z,' SPPS now has much work to do to repair the damage caused [by SEAB's] absence," Treadwell said.

In 2016, SEAB made an immediate splash with a survey of student attitudes about school resource officers (SROs), or cops in the schools. But at the time, the district blocked the group from asking its most pointed question: Should officers be in the schools at all? The school board ultimately voted in 2020 to remove the SROs.

Research has been key to much of SEAB's work. That has required access to district departments and administrators — and, in turn, a facilitator to help open doors.

In 2018, the group highlighted how white students were more likely than students of color to be enrolled in advanced courses. A year later came a SEAB study calling for ethnic studies to be a graduation requirement. That will go into effect in the fall.

The position was posted July 6 with an application deadline of July 26. Go to spps.org/careers, hit the "prospective employees" tab and type in SEAB to apply.

While the facilitator will report to the school board's administrator, the posting suggests the group will be free to take contrary stances. Among the facilitator's responsibilities will be to help SEAB engage with officials and board members when the students' shared beliefs and philosophies "are in opposition to the perspective" of the board and administration.

Questions as to whether SEAB members again will have a seat alongside board members or now be allowed to vote are to be taken up by the facilitator and the board subcommittee overseeing the process, district spokeswoman Erica Wacker said this week.