Reply to Charting historic MCPS SMOBs by high school - 2 finalists’ schools represent 33.3% of all SMOBs

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Reply to "Charting historic MCPS SMOBs by high school - 2 finalists’ schools represent 33.3% of all SMOBs"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=ModeratelyMoco][quote=Anonymous]Well, the students are the ones who vote. What do you suggest to remedy the issue? Is there something inherent in the process that causes this inequity?

I’d think outreach to schools to identify strong candidates would be a first step, perhaps working with counselors and SGA sponsors.  [/quote]

[b]The biggest issue is that the narrowing down to finalists[/b] is done by a small select group of kids who need to go in person to vote and not everyone gets to vote.

Once the finalists are narrowed down, everyone gets to vote but that is not so for selecting who the finalists are. [/quote]
This is incorrect. The biggest issue is earlier than that. There are not enough well qualified candidates that choose to run from the missing schools.

I think people don't realize the complex network of HS and MS SGA activities that exists across the county. It's not just the local school SGA. There is also Montgomery County Junior Council (MCJC) https://www.mcjcsga.org/ and Montgomery County Regional Student Government Association (MCR) https://www.mcrsga.com/ . MCR has a committee that manages the SMOB nominating process - they work on it all year from revising the [url=https://drive.google.com/file/d/1srTHYymZJDT_0LlFPtkaNyOCr4egSu9g/view]SMOB Election Protocols[/url] through the nominating convention and running the election (my DC was on this a couple years ago). The students involved in student government function just like any other network of people over time. They get to know each other through different things they work on, they invite their friends to be involved, and over the years they build up a network of people who will vote for them. That narrowing down of candidates isn't done by a small select group of kids. It's a full blown nominating convention with the number of delegates based on school population (~1 per 200 students). There's a process for selecting the delegates spelled out. Anyone in the school can apply. However, the kids who usually end up as delegates are typically already part of the SGA at the school, because they are the ones interested and already involved. And because they are already involved, they probably are somewhat familiar with the candidates already. Again, it's all about the networking already done over the years.

If you want to improve equitable representation of the SMOB across high schools, there needs to be more equity in programs at the schools that leads to highly qualified candidates. Part of that is strong school level SGAs that have a high level of involved kids and who communicate the importance of being involve in MCJC and MCR. But I also think a key piece is having a good debate team at the school. I'm pretty sure most the recent SMOBs have been on their school debate team. At the nominating convention, the candidates need to sell themselves and their ideas to other students. Debate trained students can just talk circles around candidates who are not strong speakers. It doesn't matter if a SMOB candidate has some good ideas, if they can't sell them to the other students, they won't get nominated.
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