For the first time in more than 30 years, there was a student sitting at the board table at the Feb. 20 meeting of the Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200 Board of Education.
OPRF now has six, soon to be seven, student delegates to the Board of Education. One of them, senior Iris Keane, sits at the board table and participates in open session but does not vote.
Keane made a big impression on board members and others during her first meeting, jumping into the discussion about student absences and other issues without any prompting. The 18-year-old from Oak Park made thoughtful comments, asked good questions and showed off her sense of humor. She didn’t seem intimidated in the least. School Board President Tom Cofsky was impressed.
“She got it from the get go,” Cofsky said after the meeting.
Superintendent Greg Johnson said Keane “was exceptional.”
“Some of the questions that she asked helped to really illustrate why that perspective is so valuable,” Johnson said. “She gave her own personal experiences.”
Keane said her secret to success was in her preparation.
“I was just really excited,” Keane said after her first board meeting. “I was at home practicing random little quips, not quips, but practicing what I would say.
“I read through a lot of the materials to hopefully have good questions. I hope I did that.”
Keane also had a suggestion for a future agenda item, proposing the board discuss providing extra bus transportation for some special education students to help them be more able to participate in extracurricular activities such as Best Buddies Club meetings held at 7:20 a.m.
“Coming into this position I really wanted to bring more voices to the disabled community at OPRF, especially the intellectually disabled community,” Keane said. “Their voices are often not heard.”
This year the School Board, after a months long process, decided to add student delegates to the school board on a pilot basis. One, a senior, sits at the board table; the others observe. The pilot program is expected to last through next year with the School Board deciding in 2026 whether to continue student representation on the School Board.
Besides Keane, the other student delegates sworn in on Feb. 20 were juniors Isabel Haneberg-Ruiz and Olive Tepfer, and sophomores Miriam Beutler, Leonidas “Leo” Campbell and Gayatri Gadhavi. After being sworn in they all took seats in the audience and watched the meeting. Freshman Ruby Durgin was not at the meeting and will be sworn in at a future meeting.
All the potential student delegates had to submit written applications and then were interviewed by the superintendent, School Board members and staff.
Johnson said the majority of students who applied to be student delegates were accepted.
Other than Keane, the student delegates left the meeting shortly after 9:30 p.m., before it was finished. They had homework to do and school officials emphasized to them that they are students first and didn’t need to stay for the entire meeting. As they left the meeting they all said that they found the meeting interesting.
“I’m seeing school from a completely different lens,” Gadhavi said. “Now we’re seeing it from the adult perspective and the perspective from the people who are making decisions that we’re experiencing. It’s interesting to see both sides.”
Keane declined an offer to leave early and stayed until around 10:35 p.m. when the board went back into closed session.
After the meeting Keane said that she doesn’t want to be cut any slack because she is a student.
“I feel like as someone sitting at the table I want to hold myself to some of the same expectations that board members are,” Keane said.
Keane, who transferred to OPRF from Fenwick during the middle of her sophomore year, said she didn’t hesitate to apply when she heard that the board was looking for student delegates.
“Once the interviews came up it was a no brainer,” Keane said.
Speaking up is nothing new for Keane, who is a member of the OPRF Speech team. When she was a fifth grader and lived in Elmwood Park she addressed a School Board there to complain about large class sizes.
Keane is a little disappointed that she will have only a few months to sit at the board table and participate in board discussions.
“I do wish that was a beginning of the year thing or that they were able to implement this before,” Keane said. “However I’m hoping to set a good example for other districts in the area.”
She plans to make an impact in her time at the board table.
“I hope that my three months here, being the outspoken person I am, is able to show them that students care and that they can have a meaningful impact on the School Board and what things they should be doing,” Keane said.
Bob Skolnik is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
