Three students are set to join the Clymer Central School Board of Education as ex-officio members. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

CLYMER — Three Clymer students have been recommended as ex-officio members of the Board of Education for next year.

Last year, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law a bill that will require every school district and BOCES board in the state to have at least one ex-officio student representative, which is set to take effect on July 1. Under the new law, student school board members would not be empowered to vote or attend executive sessions or able to attend any meeting or hearing that is not open to the public.

During Clymer’s June Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Beth Olson said they had originally planned on having two students join the board, but ended up with these three instead.

“We had three applications and a committee that reviewed the applications of all three members and originally we were only shooting for two, but due to the nature of the ages we thought we would just bring all three on board, because our oldest, our senior could be a good mentor for our incoming ninth grader, and then we have an eleventh grader,” Olson said.

The three students are Adelie Jackson, Roman Wassink and Kara Collins. Olson said she had their original applications and letters if any board member was interested in looking through those.

“As I explained to them, the expectation is that they will meet, they will participate in student council meetings, and then what I’m calling my cabinet, I will meet with them prior to our board meeting and we’re going to talk about what we’re going to talk about here at the board meeting as well as what they want to bring to the table and sort of create an agenda and then they’ll come to the board meeting,” Olson said.

Additionally, Olson said she is looking into training for the three students, advocating for it to be regionally as she thought it would be good for the students to experience it with other students who will be doing similar things. BOCES is looking into trying something at a couple of different vendors, she said, but if they cannot pull it off maybe they will look into doing something with neighboring districts.

“Again, a couple of times a year, just what’s going on, how are you guys handling this?” Olson said. “You know, it’s our first time through and I think the more feedback we can provide the better off that we can make this.”

Olson expressed that she was very excited and that she believed the board has a “good crew” coming in.