Interlake High School students questioned school board candidates about everything from academic standards to zero tolerance policies at a groundbreaking student-run candidate forum.

Interlake High School’s subchapter of the Pacific Northwest Junior State of America held a forum for the Bellevue School District’s Board of Directors on Oct. 22 after classes.

Four of the five school board candidates up for election were present, including Krischanna Roberson for Director District No. 4; Ed Luera and My-Linh Thai for Director District No. 5; and Chris Marks, running unopposed for Director District No. 3. Tracy Trojovsky, running for District 4, was absent.

The event was proctored by Junior Statesmen Hariharan Maheshwaran and Franklin Shen.

Here are the highlights of the forum:

The most important problems facing the district

The forum began with questions submitted by JSA.

“It is undoubtedly important for a politician to understand his or her constituency,” Shen said. “What do you think is the most important problem facing students in Bellevue?”

Luera had heard from student athletes on the sports teams he coaches that overcrowding is a problem on campuses, he said. The candidate also cited a lack of vocational options for students.

“Not everyone here may want to go to college,” he said. “So what I would want to do is create more of an emphasis on … vocational tech with an (Advanced Placement) cap at each school so you don’t have to go from one school, get in your car and go to (another school).”

Marks believed the greatest problem facing students was finding their area of academic interest, she said.

“Ideally, all students find their way and find their path and find the thing that ignites their passion,” Marks said. “I think the journey to find that is … complex. Some kids know exactly what works for them, and not everybody does.”

Roberson concurred, with the additional thought that students needed to learn how to communicate their own desires to parents and other adults in order to find fulfillment and guidance.

“If I can sum it up, I’m going to say navigating,” she said. “You’re always trying to figure out how to navigate which way to go. And it’s not just with ‘Do I want to go to college, or do I want to go to vocational school?’ You’re also talking about ‘How do I talk to … my parents?’ How do I navigate me trying to tell them what I want as opposed to what they want me to do?”

Thai opened by saying her campaign was based on communication and engagement, including communication between students and the adults in their lives.”I think that is one of the problems we might face,” she said. “Being able to engage our students. To listen to you. To hear from you what’s important to you, and communicate directly to you. And to treat you with respect, the way we ask of you to treat us with respect.”

Thai added that students needed to be shown the applications of the subjects they were learning, recalling her own experiences learning biology, physics and chemistry without immediately understanding their real-world relevance.

Student safety

Shen followed with another JSA question about how to prevent campus violence, in light of the seventh-grade shooting in Sparks, Nev. the day prior.All candidates agreed that physical defenses, such as campus lockdown capability, were only the tip of the iceberg; students, teachers and administration had to identify hostile situations before they reached a boiling point.

“Obviously it doesn’t get to the heart of the matter to try to impose security to keep people safe,” Marks said. “We have … security officers and police officers whose specialty is working with students. They are at all four of the high schools and there is one that roves among middle schools. We get support on those from the city.

“The other thing is, we’ve got a lot of attention paid to social and emotional learning.”

Thai said the community needed to come together to communicate threats. Referring to a student one state over who had been approached by a stranger, she said the students had communicated to parents, who then communicated amongst each other and to the school district. She added that social media should be used to broadcast potential dangers throughout the community.

Luera and Roberson agreed students were the first group who would see a student in distress or displaying harmful tendencies, and that if they see a problem, they should report it to school authorities.

Zero tolerance

A student-submitted question asked whether the candidates supported zero tolerance disciplinary policies, meaning a student would be automatically expelled if they violated certain codes of conduct such as those against campus violence.

All candidates said they did not, and they believed context needed to be taken into account in disciplinary enforcement.

“In a K-12 system, policies are in place but we have to remember what we’re dealing with,” Roberson said. “We’re dealing with kids and we’re dealing with kids who don’t always make the best decisions. To me, it’s impossible to say there’s zero tolerance. So I think you need to look at every situation individually. What were the circumstances leading up to that? What were the repercussions that evolved after that?

“Violence against another human is one thing; misbehavior is another. Kids don’t need to have the mistakes they made in K-12 to carry with them for the rest of their lives.”

Marks noted that while emergency expulsions could happen, the criteria are very specifically designed.