On one of the biggest nights of his life, Shiva Rajbhandari was at Roots Zero Waste Market. The 18-year-old climate activist from Boise, Idaho, described it as “a super cool local grocery store with an event space.” About 30 of his friends and supporters were there, eating “super good food.”
They were there to find out if Rajbhandari would defeat incumbent Steve Schmidt — a 47-year-old engineer endorsed by local far-right extremist groups — in the race for a seat on the school board. Around 10:30 p.m. Rajbhandari saw a tweet that the election results wouldn’t be announced until well after midnight.
“And then I was like, ‘OK, well, everyone can go home or you can come over,’” he recalled. “And some people came over to my house and we watched ’Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.’ And then as it got closer to 1 a.m., we turned off the TV and we just started watching the election-counting livestream, which is super boring. And then finally we had the results.”
At 3:10 a.m. on Sept. 7 — a school night — Rajbhandari tweeted a selfie. It showed him, wide-eyed and smiling, flanked by friends, campaign staff, volunteers and his dad.
“I was just really humbled to be surrounded by all the people who had gotten me to this point,” he said. Rajbhandari, a senior at Boise High School, had just been elected to the Boise School District Board of Trustees with 56% of the vote.
That Sunday, Rajbhandari attended Boise Pride as a trustee-elect. On Tuesday, he put on a shirt and tie, raised his right hand, and was sworn into office.
And on Wednesday, at 3:07 p.m., in the half hour he had free between AP Psych and cross-country practice, Rajbhandari talked to HuffPost about why he ran for office, why more students should run, why it’s vital to stand up to book-banning, gun-toting, anti-mask, anti-LGBTQ extremists who harass school boards across the country, especially in Idaho ― and why he got sent to to the principal’s office that one time.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What inspired you to run?
So first of all, I think students deserve a voice, and I think students belong everywhere decisions are being made, but particularly where decisions are being made in education. Across the country, 14% of large school districts have students on the school board. Having folks with boots on the ground in the classroom, honestly, is a no-brainer when it comes to making educational decisions. Particularly now, when there’s so many…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Books…