St. Paul Public Schools to try again to give voice to students

Hopes were high for a revival this year of a student group with a knack for making things happen in St. Paul Public Schools.

A job posting went up during the summer for a facilitator to work with the now dormant Student Engagement and Advancement Board (SEAB).

But the position — seen as vital to the group's efforts to navigate the state's second-largest district and pursue the kind of research projects that have sparked changes in district policies — drew zero applicants.

"Back to the drawing board," Jessica Kopp, the school board's vice chair, said recently.

The district now is turning to consultants to get things back on track.

Last month, the school board approved a $32,500 contract with the nonprofit Youth Leadership Initiative to draft a new student engagement model for the district — one that will rely on focus group interviews leading to a central question:

"What do students want?" Kopp said. "It might look the same (as SEAB), it might look different, but we're not going to know until we talk to them."

But the group, which was replenished annually with new members as students graduated, began to sputter at the start of the pandemic. The original facilitator left, and as the district struggled to find a suitable replacement, it let SEAB go dark in 2021-22.

Minneapolis has added a second student representative to its school board — each of whom is paid a $5,000 stipend — and is having them collaborate with members of the district's CityWide student leadership board.

CityWide includes about 30 students from a dozen high schools, and they receive yearly stipends of $1,000 to $1,200. The members identify projects, collect data from their respective schools and identify potential solutions.

That school-level approach appeals to Kalid Ali, a graduate of St. Paul's Como Park High and a member of the last SEAB cohort in 2020-21.

Ali said in an interview that while the district sometimes surveys students about various topics, he believes it is no match for having student representatives at different buildings who engage with peers and share what they learn.

In a 2016 presentation to school board members, Chang spoke of being a Hmong student who felt invisible when a teacher delivered a history lesson on the Vietnam War without mentioning her people's involvement in it.

"There are a tremendous amount of narratives and voices that are excluded from the curriculum and faculty of SPPS," Chang said then. Her comments were viewed by Shaun Kelley Walsh, the group's original facilitator, as a spark for the district's eventual adoption of a critical ethnic studies graduation requirement.

The new engagement model that will be developed by the consultants will be submitted to students for feedback, according to an outline of the project's budget.

Board Member Uriah Ward said during last month's board meeting that he was pleased to see the district take a comprehensive approach to the issue.

"One of the most common concerns or critiques that I hear from people is: What happened to SEAB?" he said. "It is frustrating that it has taken so long to get to a point where it seems as if we're doing something about it."