A Student Ran For School Board … and Won
Mary Harris: How many school board meetings have you watched over the last couple of years? School board meetings where parents yell about COVID and it’s time to take these masks off of my child. Yell about critical race theory. You created a curriculum of Black Panther indoctrination. Ma’am, you use taxpayers dollars. School board meetings where parents try to remove library books.
Speaker 2: Public schools have vivid pornography in it, and these Congress won’t do anything about it.
Speaker 3: You’re demoralizing them by teaching them communist values.
Mary Harris: This is still America. Ma’am, I have no problem having a peaceful discussion. This is not a peaceful discussion. No, that’s your opinion. See? Here we go again. Now, imagine watching those same school board meetings as a teenager and all those high stakes conversations. All the yelling. It’s about you, your classroom, your teachers. Hey, Shiva.
Speaker 2: How are you?
Mary Harris: Good. Did you press record? So we’re ready. Now you know how Shiva Rajbandari feels. I am recording on my end. I want to respect your time because I know that you have. You have school and you now have an after school job. So I know you’re busy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I got till, like, 730, three, 30 minutes.
Mary Harris: Shiva’s new after school job is that he’s on his local school board. A duly elected member and just eight years old.
Mary Harris: But before I get into all that, it helps to know where Shiva is. Boise, Idaho.
Speaker 2: Living in Boise is really interesting because it’s a very progressive community here, but surrounding us almost on all sides, we’re seeing a lot of these really Far-Right attacks on our schools.
Mary Harris: In some ways, these far right attacks feel familiar. Idaho passed an anti critical race theory bill and the state’s lieutenant governor started an indoctrination task force to investigate public schools. But a lot of what’s going on in this state has a distinctly Idaho in flavor.
Speaker 2: You know, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which controls a lot of the politics of our state, really has this end goal of abolishing education altogether.
Mary Harris: Public education.
Speaker 2: Public education. And I think they really took advantage of that during the pandemic.
Mary Harris: High ranking Boise legislators I’m talking about Republicans have even started warning about the way education is being weaponized for political gain in their state. This is the environment in which Shiva decided, Yeah, I’ll run for office. And to be clear, it’s not unheard of for students to be on their local school boards. But a teenager unseating an incumbent, that is rare. You know, I’ve been following some of the news coverage of your election, and I think my favorite bit was a local news anchor who compared what happened with you to the plot of a Disney Channel original movie.
Speaker 4: Like the plot of a Disney Channel original movie. A high school kid wins an elected seat to a local school board. But that’s the real story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was interesting.
Speaker 4: After 18 year old Boise High School student Shiva Rob Rajbandari nailed it.
Mary Harris: Do you worry that people will think of your election? I don’t know. As a joke or as like something to, like, kids do the darndest things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that’s certainly a concern. And I think it really is my job to to show that that’s not true.
Mary Harris: Today on the show, how a high school senior is now helping make the rules in his Idaho school district. I’m Mary Harris. You’re listening to What Next? Stick around.
Mary Harris: Shiva Rajbandari is pretty soft spoken for a progressive kid who’s managed to pull out a political victory in a state with a lot of vocal conservatives. He says it was climate change that animated him at first.
Speaker 2: You know, I first learned about climate change in seventh grade, and I was lucky to grow up in a school district where it was part of our science standards.
Mary Harris: Is that not typical in Idaho?
Speaker 2: No. At the time it was not. And it still really is not really in the science standards. But we spent, you know, a two week unit on climate change in Earth science. And it was, for me very isolating because it felt like, you know, this this very large problem that, you know, our world leaders weren’t really facing. And it was really frustrating. So, you know, between seventh and ninth grade, I think that was kind of the sense of of almost like doom, like looming over my head and I think head of many of my peers. And so, you know, September 2019 and eighth grade, when I saw a poster of my friends advertising this climate strike, and we decided to attend.
Mary Harris: In cities all across the world today, protesters are taking to the streets in record numbers, demanding their leaders reduce greenhouse gas emissions to address climate change. Flanked by armed guards, students in Afghanistan risked their lives to declare climate change an immediate threat, even in a war zone. They were joined by students around the world. Replaced school with social action.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, seeing 1500 my peers there at the Capitol demanding our elected officials take action and then seeing millions of other youth around the world demanding action from world leaders, really this sense of isolation turned into a sense of empowerment.
Mary Harris: You spoke, right?
Speaker 2: That’s right. There was like an open mic. And so I. I came up and I took the mic right now. What do you think? For eight years? Well, I. You what’s going to happen? Your jobs are going away. My voice is like pretty high pitched tone. And I was just, like, screaming at these legislators and and our Idaho representatives.
Mary Harris: It’s funny. I can hear you kind of look back. You may look back and cringe a little bit, but it sounds like it was also, I don’t know, like your origin story. You must have felt empowered afterwards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was certainly the start, I think, of my career in climate activism and in politics in general.
Mary Harris: And it wasn’t just climate change, right? Like you started organizing around voting rights, gun control, all sorts of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s right. Issues that are affecting young people today that we’re not seeing action from our elected officials on.
Mary Harris: But it wasn’t just politicians in Washington or even Boise who are bothering Shiva. He saw inaction in his own school and he didn’t see a lot of appetite for change. There’s this one time when Shiva went to his principal to ask for more mental health support for students.
Speaker 2: And it was just a really hard conversation because I think for him, his hands were kind of tied because in Idaho we’re, you know, we’re last and per pupil education funding, which means we can’t really provide a lot of the resources that students need. I think, you know, he felt. Like I was saying, that we weren’t doing enough, which is true. We’re not doing enough to address mental health.
Mary Harris: Was he angry with you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was very angry.
Mary Harris: Had something happened at your school that sort of motivated you to speak about this?
Speaker 2: We had had a video announcement about, like, policing in schools, and it just felt very tone deaf that we were talking about our peers as if we were a threat to each other when really we were all facing this common threat that was like very real. I think we’d had a suicide like two weeks before. There are suicides about every year in our school. Idaho’s one of the leading states in teen suicide rates. And it’s not new. Even with the pandemic, even in 2019, 10% of Idaho students had acted on suicidal thoughts.
Mary Harris: 10% of Idaho students.
Speaker 2: Exactly. And that’s not to mention, you know, how many people were having those thoughts. Right.
Mary Harris: So you were asking. You were saying the school needed to do more here. And it sounds like your principal was saying with like me and what army?
Speaker 2: I think yeah, I think that’s right. And it was just a really hard conversation. And I remember I was in tears. He was pretty upset. And when I came back to my classes, just it was it was tough.
Mary Harris: Hmm. How did you decide to run for school board?
Speaker 2: I think it was it was a process, you know. I remember the summer of 2021. Idaho is the center of really these Far-Right attacks on education. Right. Critical race theory. Our lieutenant governor put together this task force.
Mary Harris: It was an anti indoctrination task force, right?
Speaker 2: That’s right.
Speaker 4: The task force was put together last month to, quote, examine indoctrination in Idaho education and to protect our young people from the scourge of critical race theory, socialism, communism and Marxism, she says.
Speaker 2: And indoctrination is what she alleged Idaho teachers were doing to our students, which, you know, at the time coming out of a pandemic where teachers had been working double shifts to make it work. Attendance was at all time lows. It was really tone deaf.
Mary Harris: So how did you see the impact of all this in the classroom? As a student.
Speaker 2: I remember one day walking into my English class and reading an assignment and half the assignment was was blacked out in in Sharpie. And it wasn’t because the assignment was about race there. It wasn’t. And but it was because our teacher had been dogged by this task force.
Mary Harris: When you say docs, what do you mean?
Speaker 2: I mean, in this task force, they’re using teachers names. They’re, you know, calling teachers indoctrinate. And they’re really spewing this rhetoric that then is kind of enforced by certain minority extremist voices in our community.
Mary Harris: So what was blacked out? Was it content?
Speaker 2: It was content. But I don’t know what because it was blacked out. The assignment was it was about like racism in the sixties.
Mary Harris: Did your teacher do that as a statement? Like, I’m not allowed to say that. Sort of like standing in front of someone with duct tape over your mouth or was it something else?
Speaker 2: I think it was a legitimate sense of fear and a sense of intimidation. And I remember thinking at that time that. You know, this isn’t right. It isn’t right that my teachers are coming under attack from these extremist voices that really are just fueling their own political gain. And it isn’t right that our district leaders who know that our teachers are not breaking the law, who know that we have some of the best teachers in the state, are not standing up for our teachers and are not providing them the resources they need to. Avoid these attacks.
Mary Harris: If you were still interested in climate change in all of this. Right. Like my understanding is that you kind of your tipping point was that your school districts wouldn’t commit to a sustainability roadmap about the climate. And so then you just thought, I need more say here.
Speaker 2: That’s right. We’ve been working with students across the district on a clean energy commitment and long term sustainability plan for our schools. And for two years, we’ve been reaching out to our board members. We sent like over 300 postcards. We delivered the largest petitioner school district had ever received. We had sent dozens of emails to board members, and we really didn’t get the response that I think we deserve. Our board members rarely responded to emails and it was just really frustrating.
Speaker 2: I remember one time in particular I sent a letter to our school board president and he’s now my colleague asking for, you know, just a meeting detailing some of our efforts and asking for a meeting. And the next week, I was called into into my principal’s office and reprimanded for reaching out to my elected official. And that’s not to say that I ran for school board from a place of animosity, but it’s to say that I saw this need, right, that student voices weren’t weren’t being taken seriously, that students weren’t being seen as constituents, when really we are the primary stakeholders in our education, we deserve honestly more than anyone, a seat at the table when we’re making decisions about education. And that wasn’t the case in our district. And that’s what really motivated me to run.
Mary Harris: After the break, how did Shiva manage to defeat an incumbent school board member? And now that he’s on the board. What’s his next move?
Mary Harris: How do you even begin to engineer a school board run as a teenager? What was your first step?
Speaker 2: My first step was I called my good friend Sam. Sam who who’s a progressive organizer, really, for education. And she was the treasurer for our Boise mayor, Lauren McLean’s campaign. And I called her up and I said, Sam, I’m running for school board. Will you be my treasurer? And immediately she says, yes.
Mary Harris: Sam is not a high schooler.
Speaker 2: That’s what I said, that Sam is really a seasoned advocate for Idaho’s youth. So then I filed with the secretary of State and set up set up an account. And then I’m 17 at the time, right. So I can’t even on my own bank account. So my mom and I got out into the bank and we started a savings account for my trustee run. And then I organized a press conference and I think we got every media outlet in the city to come by. It’s time that our school district listen to students. We deserve to have our input considered. We’re making decisions. And really, Mary, extremism is something that I didn’t want to talk about in my schools. Right. But I wanted to talk about was mental health and the crisis that that we’re really facing across the nation, but particularly in Idaho.
Mary Harris: The thing is, the incumbent Shiva was running against a guy named Steve Schmidt. Managed to make extremism a talking point. Anyway, when Schmidt earned the endorsement of a group known as the Idaho Liberty Dogs, that’s a quasi militia that says it stands for America First and vets before illegals. Schmidt refused to reject their support, and that gave Shiva a potent political weapon.
Speaker 2: And I think that what frustrated me most about my opponent’s unwillingness to disavow their endorsement. Was that he was a sensible guy. He’s he’s not an extremist. And but it it showed that he didn’t understand the danger that this kind of extremism poses to our schools. I remember just last May when our school was nearly shut down because a student had brought a gun onto the sidewalk in front of our campus. And then he was suspended. And this group organized or tried to organize this armed protest outside of my high school. So they’re bringing guns to a school, you know, right around the same time as this mass shooting in Boulder, Texas.
Mary Harris: Huh. And their argument was, I guess students should be able to bring weapons to class.
Speaker 2: I’m not sure where their argument was. I think it was we don’t like public education.
Mary Harris: Yeah. And eventually the Idaho Statesman endorsed you in this race and they said they did that primarily because your opponent had this endorsement that he refused to reject. So that was really interesting. Were you surprised by that endorsement?
Speaker 2: You know, I wasn’t surprised because I know that I’m qualified to serve on a school board. Um, and, you know, I know the place that students have in, in our government. What I was really happy about was that I think the majority of of Boise voters agreed with my assertion, which is that extremism has no place in our schools. And, you know, we don’t even want to see it in an endorsement. You know, when you’re endorsed by a group like this, you need to immediately disavow that.
Mary Harris: Can you describe election night to me? Like, when did you know you’d won? Like, how much weighting was there and what did you do?
Speaker 2: There is a lot of weighting. So trustee elections in the Boise school district normally are 6000, 7000 people vote, which is like a 6% voter turnout. But this election, I think because of all the attacks we’ve seen in our schools and really had heightened attention. So they thought they’d better have counting done by 10:30 p.m. So we organized a election night party and it was so awesome to be, you know, surrounded by all these folks who had really helped me along the way. This was such a team effort. Students who knocked on doors for my campaign, my teachers, my mentors, you know, folks who had endorsed me and my parents. But then 1030 rolls around and the district tweets, you know, counting won’t be done for another 2 to 3 hours.
Speaker 2: So so then I invited everyone over to my house and we sat down. We turned on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. And, you know, we just kind of sat there nervously and watched the movie at eight or do is that my mom and me? And and then the results rolled in and we really ecstatic. And I remember. You know, it just felt very surreal that that we had won, we’d organized and we’d won and that voters had spoken and they wanted a student on the school board.
Mary Harris: You have a two year term. Do you plan to serve both years?
Speaker 2: I don’t. I really want to be replaced by a student on the school board because it doesn’t make sense to have someone who’s not boots on the ground in our classrooms. Representing students on the board. We need a permanent student position on the school board. So I want to be shadowed by several students from across the district. And then I want to resign next year. And then when I’m trustee resigns, the rest of the board votes to replace them. And I want one of these students to replace me. But if if my fellow trustees don’t agree to to replace me with a student, I will serve that full two year term and I’ll switch from college or I’ll take a gap year. But I’m not going to give up the seat to someone like Steve Schmidt again.
Mary Harris: What’s the first thing you want to do?
Speaker 2: I want to address the mental health crisis in our schools. I want to, you know, increase our counselor to student ratios. I want to move to later school, start times, and I want to provide more professional development opportunities for teachers to talk about mental health in schools.
Mary Harris: That sounds expensive.
Speaker 2: You know what’s expensive is. Is students dying in in schools.
Mary Harris: Yeah. You know, I was talking to a colleague who’s an educator, and we were talking about the fact that someone like you has to get involved. Shows a failure of the adults around you. The adults aren’t doing the work to care for the people who need to be cared for. And that leaves this space where children have to step up and grab the microphone when it comes to the climate crisis, when it comes to what’s happening in their schools. I wonder how you feel it, whether you feel it as unfair pressure or opportunity.
Speaker 2: It certainly is unfair that a crisis which, you know, was created long before us and should have been addressed long before I was born and has now fallen on my shoulders and the shoulders of my generation. But I wouldn’t say that having students in power, having students in government. Is indicates a failure in the system. I think that when people who had the most at stake have a say in what happens, that’s that’s how government is supposed to work. That’s what our country was founded on. And I feel super lucky to live at a time where we still can’t act on the climate crisis, where we still can save many, many lives from the mental health crisis, and where we can fight for student empowerment and student representation at all levels of government.
Mary Harris: Shiva I’m super grateful for your time, especially very early before you go to school in the morning. Thank you for coming on the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you, man. I appreciate it.
Mary Harris: Shiva Rajbandari is a senior at Boise High School. He’s also a recently elected member to the Boise School District Board of Trustees. And that’s our show. If you’re a fan of what next, the best way to show us some love is to join Slate. Plus, going over to slate.com. Such what next? Plus. And sign up like right now. Go do it. What next is produced by Ilana Schwartz, Mary Wilson, Carmel Delshad and Madeline Ducharme. We are getting a ton of support right now from Anna Phillips and Jared Downing. We are led by Alicia montgomery and Joanne Levine. And I’m Mary Harris. I will be back in this feed tomorrow. I’ll talk to you then.
