by David Snow
The Paducah Sun
June 24, 2022
Used with permission.
Last year, the Paducah Independent School District Board welcomed two students who were elected as student representatives to the board to serve as liaisons between students and board members.
The first representatives, juniors Dasia Garland and Synia Shaw Laster, served their last board meeting on June 13 after a year of providing student opinions and needs to the board.
The representatives for the 2022-23 school year will be CoryOn Brooks and Jayda Reed, both of whom will be sophomores at Paducah Tilghman High School during that school year. Both were also at the June 13 meeting to begin their tenure.
Brooks was a member of the Interact Club and Beta Club last year as a freshman, and was a student representative for the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) Committee. He is a teaching assistant and actor at the Market House Theatre and is a member of the PTHS speech and debate team.
Reed was a member of the academic club and Beta Club in the past school year as a freshman and has played volleyball since seventh grade, playing right-side hitter for the PTHS team last season.
Brooks said that Garland is one of his friends and he was inspired by her service to be a representative himself.
“Seeing her make a positive outlook and making a positive change throughout the community and district makes me want to be like her. She’s older than me, and I really look up to her. She’s very smart. I wanted to make a change and follow in her footsteps.”
Reed said she wanted to be a school board student representative as a means of improving her interpersonal skills.
“I saw a chance to be more outspoken and more uninhibited,” she said. “I saw a chance to make the school system better and make myself a better all around person.”
Brooks and Reed also attended the May school board meeting and were able to see how a meeting is conducted. They said they had spoken with Garland and Shaw Laster about what their jobs entail. Brooks said that Garland and Shaw Laster gave them advice and told them to do an even better job than they did.
“I realized (at the May meeting) just how different the energy is,” Reed said. “I see those people every day, and their energy was so different. The setting was different, how quickly things move.
“(Garland and Shaw Laster) were very proper and very well-spoken; they interacted well with everyone.”
“I like the act of professionalism (at the board meetings),” Brooks said. “I would like to be there to get a different outlook on how decisions are being made and money is being spent. Many people don’t know what goes on at board meetings, so it would be good to be there and let other people know what goes on.”
Reed said one of her goals for the next school year is for the schools to come together — and PTHS itself to come together — to make them better schools.
“Things like clubs,” she said. “You have to go and find clubs; you don’t hear about them. That’s why I think a lot of people aren’t in clubs or don’t know about activities. Our communication needs to be better here at Tilghman.”
Brooks said that he wants to be a part of change.
“When I have an idea, I want that idea to follow through,” he said. “I agree with Jayda. I take part in a lot of clubs, and many people ask, ‘What is that?’ We do need more formal communication.”
Shonda Hollowell Burrus, the equity officer for the Paducah school district, oversees the student representative program. She praised the work that Garland and Shaw Laster did in the first year of the program.
“Overall, I think the ladies did well,” she said. “They’re still learning, they’re still growing, they’re still maturing. So, it’s a lot to be placed in front of a lot of adults in a board meeting without anything to compare it to.
“I’m really proud of them for their efforts and their ability to speak authentically in the student voice.”
Burrus said that while Brooks and Reed are a year younger than their predecessors were when they took the position, she said it will provide the newcomers more of an opportunity for growth and learning.
“That will place a little bit of an emphasis on the two,” she said. “They still have more opportunities for growth and for learning and then, to learn from Dasia and Synia for things that worked well and things that they have to work on. I’m looking forward to working with them both.”
Burrus said that Garland and Shaw Laster did a great job in bringing the student voice to the school board meetings.
“It’s their perspective on how things are run, professionally and productively, with students in mind,” Burrus said. “As an educational school system, where the students are in mind, how befitting it is for the students to be able to have a voice and have a seat at the table.”
Burrus said she is already proud of Brooks and Reed and is looking forward to the voices that each will bring to the student representative position.
“It’s not just for Paducah Tilghman students, but from Head Start all the way to our high schoolers,” she said.
“They will have the opportunity to visit the school sites and selected students from the elementary and middle schools. They will all meet collectively with our superintendent to take a temperature and a pulse of what’s going on in the school system: What’s working for the students and where students feel like their voices are not being heard and things that they would like to see addressed.”