18-Year-Old Running For Spot On Hicksville School Board

One 18-year-old Hicksville resident is balancing his course load at Georgetown University with campaigning for a spot on the Hicksville School Board.

Every week, Kyle Singh travels back to Long Island from Washington, D.C., and works on his campaign with his team of 15 high school students.

After a last-minute BOE run in 2017, Singh knew he wanted to run again in 2018. “Last year was an interesting test,” Singh told Patch. “We feel this year we’re in a great position.”

Singh and his team began campaigning about a month ago and are working on building community awareness about the upcoming trustee elections in May.

School board elections generally have a low-turnout. “No one knows these elections exist,” Singh said.

When Singh was campaigning for his school board run last year, he spoke to a family who lived right across the street from an elementary school who didn’t know what a school board was.

”We want to make these people in Hicksville know how important these issues are,” he said.

Singh and his team are organizing a “Meet The Candidates” night for Saturday, May 12. All candidates will be invited once the ballot becomes official in April.

At “Meet The Candidates” night, residents will be able to learn about each candidate and their proposed initiatives to make an educated vote on Tuesday, May 15.

Singh wants to bring more progressive views to the school board, which he says is “stuck in the past.”

He felt that the school administration wasn’t supportive of many of his initiatives while he was a student at Hicksville High School. The fact that the Hicksville School District was not supportive of students participating in the National School Walkout on March 14 reaffirmed his sentiments.

“We need a school board that’s progressive enough to understand how students feel,” Singh said.

Running a campaign and going to class at Georgetown isn’t overwhelming to the international relations student. Singh said he is able to design his class schedule around his campaign and future trustee meetings if he is elected.

“My professors are really on board with it,” he said.

Image courtesy of Kyle Singh