New Faces for Old

Before 18-year-olds won the right to vote last summer, not a single school board in the country had a student member. As of now, there are 13 of them, and more than 100 other teenagers are expected to campaign for school-board vacancies this spring.

Some of the innovations proposed by student members are startling. The most controversial of the newcomers is Newark's Larry Hamm, 18, a black student at Rutgers University, who attracted widespread criticism by calling for Black Nationalist liberation flags to be flown in every Newark schoolroom where black pupils form a majority (TIME, Dec. 13). Hamm, once considered a docile "model student," has also encouraged noisy claques of youths to attend board meetings and has endorsed a long list of their demands. Among them: the replacement of all public schools that are more than 100 years old (two-thirds of the city's 79 schools); the exclusion of white teachers from black-history programs; the teaching of African languages such as Hausa, Yoruba, Swahili and Arabic.

Accomplishments. Several of Hamm's proposals have already won approval by the board. He got it to change the names of South Eighth Street School and South Side High School to the Martin Luther King Jr. School and Malcolm X. Shabazz High School. At his urging, school administrators accelerated their efforts to have "the accomplishments of black people" routinely included in every subject area, not confined to black-studies courses. He also persuaded the board to give high school students instructions--and time off--for registering to vote.

Not surprisingly, Hamm's outspoken tactics have made him enemies. John Cervase, a 59-year-old attorney and the board's most pugnacious white member, argues that Hamm should not be on the board at all. "This city's schools are like a company with $1 billion in assets and a budget of $100 million a year," he says. "Can you conceive of an 18-year-old child effectively administering General Motors?"

Few of the other young contenders are radicals, but they do have strong feelings about student life. Judith Pierson, 19, hopes to get herself elected this week to the school board in Willingboro, N.J., so that she can try to change the rule that got her suspended from school last year for refusing to stand up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag (she had argued in vain with the authorities that the U.S. did not truly provide "liberty and justice for all"). Terry Smith, 18, a bespectacled blonde who works part time as a waitress, has had teams of volunteers distributing 8,000 handbills for that same February 8 election in Ewing Township. "They may think I'm childish," she says, "hut if childish means more communication and more understanding, then I'm all for childish ideas. I know what goes with curriculum and discipline and things that concern students. Like cigarettes. It seems unfair that kids who can smoke at home get expelled for three days when they're caught at school. And lunches. We have terrible lunches. Yecch!"

Other student representatives are mild and modest, like Maureen Massivver, 18, who was elected to the school committee in Pawtucket, R.I., last November. She describes herself as a "moderate liberal," and her low-key program includes upgrading Pawtucket high schools by allowing bright students to take such subjects as psychology and philosophy. She also recognizes that with budgetary problems and new teachers' contracts to settle, some of her ideas may have to wait. "Government isn't a zippy thing," she says.

"It's a slow process." Agrees John Scott Francis, 18, newly elected school board member in Reynoldsburg, Ohio: "I'm not about to go in and tear things apart. Our school isn't all that bad. In fact, it's halfway decent."

Cutting Costs. Further to the right stands William Lynch, 18, a self-proclaimed "progressive conservative," who defeated the 60-year-old school board chairman in Bremerton, Wash., in a primary held last September. Lynch, clean shaven and neatly barbered, picked up many adult votes in that race and also in the general election by promising to hold down school taxes, back up teachers on discipline, and use undercover agents in schools to help control drugs. He has stuck to at least one of those campaign promises: he voted against a proposal to give teachers a pay increase that would mean higher taxes.

The young board members often start out with ambitious ideas--that is one advantage of their arrival on the boards--but time and experience inevitably mellow even the most aggressive of the newcomers. Even Larry Hamm. When Board Member Cervase obtained a temporary court injunction last December restraining Newark schools from flying Black Power flags, Hamm took it calmly. Said he: "If the courts don't take care of it, the legislature will." Either way, Hamm says he will obey the law.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.