Get involved in local government following election

Follow up Get involved in local government following national election

Now that the election season is over, it can be easy to ignore most politics for the next four years. However, politics does not stop with the national election. In fact, the times when politicians don’t have to worry about reelection is when the most gets done. While national politics are very important, local politics have much more impact on day to day life. Additionally, it is much easier to be involved in government at the local level.

If you are a student who can’t vote, or even if you can, you can participate in your local government by attending meetings for the school board, city and county commissions and more by taking advantage of the Sunshine Act, which serves to make government easily viewable by the populace or “in the sunshine.”

As a student or parent, one of the most important groups to follow is the School Board of Broward County. This nine member elected board has regular meetings every other week at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesdays and usually has workshops during the off weeks. All meeting and workshop agendas are released in advance to allow for public comments. School board members read public comments and respond to emails because at these lowest levels of government, it is easiest to get in contact with politicians. Especially if you are a student, school board members want to hear from you.

While public comments are great, there are also several advisory committees that take into account students’, parents’ and experts’ opinions and make recommendations to the board or schools. There are 14 different groups that advise the school board, including the technology advisory committee, diversity advisory committee and the gifted advisory council. Student representatives to these councils are named by the student advisors to the school board and can be contacted at student.advisor@ browardschools.com. While only a limited number of students can be voting members of advisory committees, as stated earlier, under the Sunshine Act all meetings must be publicly viewable.

At the school level, every student and parent can participate in the School Advisory Council (SAC) and the School Advisory Forum (SAF). Both are small groups designed to invite feedback from students, parents and staff. SAC is also in charge of a small amount of government funds for local decision making to support the school improvement plan, which focuses on increasing metrics of school effectiveness.

SAC meets once a month on the second Monday of the month. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, all of these previously mentioned advisory councils are taking place on Microsoft Teams making them easier to participate in than ever.

While the groups mentioned only relate to school, many other groups influence day to day life. City commission and county commissions each meet with the Broward County commission meeting every week. The Florida state legislature meets two months a year during the spring.

Pay attention to what’s going on in local government and participate when you can, so when the next election comes around, local politicians will face just as much scrutiny, and hopefully even more, than the national ones. Even if you can’t vote, you can still make your voice heard through advisory committees.