Juniors Serena Field and Declan Murphy were elected to the Regional Student Advisory Council (RSAC) to act as representatives from Wayland High School. The election was held on Thursday, April 14 and results were announced that evening by the RSAC Board of Elections, the group of students who organized the election.

Members of history teacher Eva Urban’s AP (Advanced Placement) United States Government and Politics class were offered an opportunity to conduct the election and earn extra credit in the class. On April 4, just ten days before the election, five volunteers formed the RSAC Board of Elections: juniors Austin Russell, Olivia Lappin, Johnny Andreasen, Olivia Rubin and Trisha Raj.

“Something that the school and myself in particular have been really invested in is increasing student voice, particularly in the community outside of Wayland High School, and political and civic advocacy,” Urban said. “ When Principal Mizoguchi approached me with this opportunity, she thought that it would be something that my students would be interested in running.”

Russell had the idea to use a ranked-choice voting process and sent out a school-wide email on April 6 explaining ranked-choice voting and informing students of the election.

“We knew that in this election we needed two candidates, and no two candidates would receive a majority of the vote,” Russell said. “We really just wanted to make sure that every student who voted was happy with their selection.”

Russell’s initial email included a form for students who were interested in running as a candidate to fill out by April 13. The day before voting, the board sent out another email to students with the names of the nine candidates, along with rationales submitted by candidates explaining why they should be elected.

During lunch periods on April 14, students in the commons used paper ballots to rank their preferences for representatives. Voting was conducted on paper rather than digitally in order to reduce any potential error and maintain legitimacy.

“I was really pleased to see that within that small group [of board members], a lot of student leadership initiative and voice came out as well,” Urban said. “Principal Mizoguchi was thrilled that they were able to, first of all, put it together, but also get two highly qualified student-elected representatives to represent the student body at a state level.”

During their campaigns, Field and Murphy both made efforts to start one-on-one conversations about the election and connect with classmates. As the two elected representatives, they will be joining bimonthly meetings with student representatives from other towns, as well as meetings every four months with the Board of Education and other education policy makers.

“My [AP Gov.] teacher asked the students in her class to run [the election], but I was interested in running [as a candidate] instead,” Field said. “I’ve always been interested in school policy and policy-making in general and it seemed like a really interesting opportunity.”

Field and Murphy’s responsibilities include coming up with new policies and suggesting them to the Board of Education, while also critiquing other suggested policies. Through Field and Murphy, RSAC will allow Wayland students the opportunity to give input about issues that are important to their academic lives, such as MCAS testing and school safety regulations.

“I think the biggest impact that the RSAC will have on the school will be that students will actually have a more direct voice into what they learn and how they learn it,” Russell said. “It’s really important to have that direct line of communication over the teachers and over the school district, and actually to the entire state and policy makers.”

In terms of her goals for RSAC, Field hopes to influence policy decisions regarding curriculum and standardized testing. She plans to focus less on Wayland students specifically and more on students in the general area with greater needs.

“If we’re looking to serve [only] Wayland students, there’s very minimal things we can do on a state board level,” Field said. “I am more interested in helping other schools and working for school policies that will probably affect [other schools] more than Wayland, because we already have a bunch of resources.”

Murphy feels the same way about recognizing Wayland’s position compared to other schools and prioritizing students from those schools to an extent.

“There definitely is a large disparity between our community, which is a bubble, and other [communities],” Murphy said. “I think we definitely have to realize that we are in this position, and all decisions we make can’t only benefit us, but also have to benefit the whole state in general. I don’t think that means completely ignoring ourselves, but I definitely think we have to realize that we are not the ones in need.”

Field is most excited to meet other representatives and hear about the issues they experience in their schools.

“There is a limited amount that can be done with this position, so realistically, I’m more optimistic about how much I can learn about policy making, about issues with education in different parts of Massachusetts and how this provides Declan and I an opportunity to look at those outside of very wealthy schools,” Field said.

Both Field and Murphy emphasized the importance of student voice when it comes to decisions that impact education, rather than allowing teachers and administrators to act without student input.

“Serena and I are a very select group here in Wayland and I don’t think that we can really reflect the needs and ideas of the entire school, but we can still try our best,” Murphy said. “If people think that our choices are not representing the community, any teachers’ choices would be much farther off, so I definitely think that it is much more effective for students to be making choices that affect students.”