At the end of the table during Belmont School Committee meetings, two boys quietly take notes and follow the discussion. While they do not cast official votes, they serve as the voice of nearly 1,500 students at Belmont High School.
Andrew Ge and Yuanheng Mao, both seniors, served as co-chairs of the Advisers to the School Committee this past school year. Of the five advisers elected by the student body, Ge and Mao both attended the School Committee meetings throughout the year to represent Belmont students and offer their perspectives to the committee.
Now, the duo is getting ready to graduate on June 6.
Working Together For Student Representation
Both Ge and Mao have served as advisers to the committee for multiple years. Mao served as class president his freshman year, but wanted to step into a broader role his sophomore year. He ran for an adviser position and continued to win re-election for the remainder of his high school career.
Ge said he had always been a “government and civics kid,” and began his high school Student Senate experience serving in a class office. When he learned more about the adviser position, he ran for a seat in his junior year, wanting to get more involved in townwide issues discussed by the School Committee.
“It genuinely is a unique, one-of-a-kind experience,” Ge said, noting that many other towns don’t have their student representatives sit in for the entire meeting, or don’t have them in attendance at every meeting.
Ge and Mao also served as co-presidents of the Student Senate. The duo regularly touched base with students about issues they faced and how they felt about proposed district policies, such as the recently approved electronics policy. Last year, after an Advanced Placement Spanish class filled up, leaving more than a dozen students without their desired language class, Ge and Mao encouraged the students to make their case to the School Committee.
For Ge, it was one of the first times that he saw how powerful the student voice could be in bringing about change.
“I walked into the School Committee two years ago with no idea about how any of it worked, and then I’ve come out, two years later, finding out I’m really interested in these kind of municipal issues, and I think it’s just cool to see how the different voices of the town come together to figure out these situations,” Ge said.
The school district secured a grant to fund a part-time position to teach the class, but a teacher couldn’t be found to take the role.
Sitting with the committee and watching them debate and listen to community feedback gave them both a new insight into town government and the inner workings of the school system.
“It’s been a great learning experience,” Mao said. “…We’ve been able to see how the School Committee may not always agree on issues, and they can sometimes disagree pretty strongly, but it’s always a very respectful disagreement.”
What Comes Next
For both Ge and Mao, graduation is a bittersweet affair.
“I’m definitely excited to move on, to graduate high school, and then be able to move on to other parts of my life,” Ge said. “But at the same time, high school has definitely been a large part of all of our lives the past four years, so I think we’ll definitely all miss it.”
However, their dorms won’t be far from home in the fall. Both Ge and Mao will attend Harvard University.
“I’m also really excited to meet all the new people who will be there and make new friends there as well,” Mao said.
Mao will study government and computer science, while Ge will study economics.
While the last four years involved a flurry of student government and extracurriculars, the pair said they learned the importance of community and finding a balance between academics and family and friends.
“Value the time we have with your friends and your family, the people you care about, because whenever times get busier, sometimes it’s easy to put off like hanging out with your friends or spending time with your family, but I think really at the end of it all I don’t think that there’s any time that I spend my time to family that I regret,” Mao said.
