It has been 35 long years since a WCHS student held the title of Student Member of the Board of Education (SMOB). This one-year term position gets full voting power at the county Board of Education (BOE), making it a great way for students to have their voices heard. WCHS had three of the first 13 SMOBs in its history, but since they left office, the school has not been able to elect a student at the table. However, WCHS junior Max Wang decided to take his shot at ending the streak in 2025.
“I am just an everyday student who decided that there is room for change in MCPS, and I feel like I am the right person to bring it,” Wang said. “Like many other SMOB candidates before me, I am committed to representing the student voice, but I think it is a welcome break from precedent that my campaign focuses so much on realism, straightforward and achievable objectives.”
While student government campaigns can sometimes include impossible promises, Wang decided that he would not make promises he could not deliver. While it would ultimately take more time to research each policy to ensure that it could be done, he felt it had to be done as a way to make up for his lack of political experience compared to his fellow candidates.
“I am all about being realistic. When I said we were going to get something done, I meant it exactly the way it’s worded,” Wang said. “The problem that I have identified with the race for SMOB is that it is easy to make wild, unrealistic and impossible promises. How many times has a candidate talked about renovating every high school in the county or slashing school days in half? We would all love to have these dreams come true, but the simple reality of the constraints of the SMOB position mean that nobody can achieve some overly lofty goals. My platform, policies and promises were all designed to reflect what we could realistically and easily achieve while bringing the most benefit to students across the county.”
Wang felt that there are many small issues MCPS students face that do not get recognized enough, one of those being the current Student Service Learning (SSL) system. If elected as the SMOB, streamlining the SSL system would have been one of the first things on his realism-centered agenda.
“Students tend to have issues with the school system that they do not always air. One of the policies I came up with involved changing the SSL system to be easier to navigate, via a digital application of sorts,” Wang said. “As I spent time talking to students over the past couple of weeks, I found many of them agree with my stance on SSL, which is that right now, the system is not as good as it can and should be.”
WCHS junior Braeden Butchko believed that Wang has what it takes to improve MCPS for the better by prioritizing the students and addressing key issues within the MCPS community that many students are worried about. He admires that Wang truly represents the typical MCPS student and serves as a strong voice for their needs.
“I agreed with Max’s plans for the SMOB position because he was addressing common issues in school. Usually, student elections end up being popularity contests, but it seems that Max was willing to use his platform to improve our schools,” Butchko said. “I don’t know anyone who is happy with the Personal Mobile Device (PMD) or ID policies that schools like Churchill have and it is clear that something must change. I appreciate that Max’s issues were issues that every MCPS student has to deal with every day.”
To become the next SMOB, candidates first need to go through the election process, where candidates underwent a preliminary round of voting among delegates from all MCPS middle and high schools which narrowed the candidates down to a final two. These two remaining candidates are then voted on by every MCPS secondary student. After his speech and the first round of voting, Wang found out that he would come up just short.
“The Nomination Convention was an event where pre-selected representatives from every middle and high school in MCPS (about 400-600 delegates total) convened to narrow the list of candidates from 10 to five, and then to two,” Wang said. “Those two finalists, in this case they are Peter Boyko and Anuva Maloo, will advance to the general election, where all middle and high school students are eligible to cast a single vote for either candidate. The results will then be announced the same day once the voting period has ended. Getting eliminated was difficult, but there will still be many ways that I can help improve our school system.”
