The elected School Board members in Stafford may be the ones who make headlines, but they’re not in class in the county day after day to see how their positions play out.
To get that perspective, they look to the student representatives on the board, current students who don’t vote on issues but do participate in public discussions.
Stafford’s school division recently welcomed two new student reps to the board for this calendar year and said goodbye to the 2025 representatives, who will still be involved with student issues at the state level.
New faces
The new reps are juniors, Ta’Layah Davis at Stafford High School and Safdar “Safi” Qureshi at North Stafford High.
Ta’Layah Davis
Davis is involved in multiple honor societies and school organizations. In sports, she is a captain on both the varsity field hockey and basketball teams as well as the director of football operations, a job in which she supports coaches and players with game-day needs and outreach.
She is also an editor for SHS Publications.
Qureshi is in 12 clubs and extracurriculars at North Stafford. He is the founder and president of Model United Nations and vice president of the Red Cross Club. He’s also in the STAT Biomedical program and hopes to one day be a general physician and open his own practice.
As a student rep, Davis said she wants to use the experience she’s gained from being involved with a variety of extracurriculars to speak for students throughout Stafford’s school system.
“I genuinely want to be a voice for students that start school to the point where they finish,” she said.
Davis also said she wants to visit all of the schools in Stafford.
“I think this gives us a very accurate report of what student life is really like,” she said. “And being able to be a peer to these students and just letting them know that, ‘Hey, I’m a resource for you to use. So use me in the best way you know how.’”
Davis is a part of the superintendent’s student advisory committee, as well, and she said her experience in that group has made her think the county should do more in the way of public outreach to show students the different opportunities they can pursue after high school, whether that’s college or another path.
“So how do we get young people in one place to tell them about all their opportunities and to let them know how much of a resource the Stafford County public schools can be?” she asked. “Because we have so many amazing opportunities in this county, and I just don’t think enough students know about them.”
Safdar Qureshi
Qureshi said he wanted to be a student rep to be able to give back to the community in a larger way than just at North Stafford.
“I really, really enjoy speaking up for people,” he said.
He’s already talked to some teachers and students about his new job, and he said teachers want the county to be more competitive with neighboring school districts, such as Spotsylvania County.
“And then students wanted to be able to voice their opinion on how they want to be taught,” Qureshi said.
That’s because not every student learns in the same way, he said.
He also joked that he’s going to have to work on his physical introduction to younger, especially elementary-aged, students.
Qureshi is 6-foot-6, and his height can be daunting to younger kids.
“It’s a little scary coming up to them,” he said. “In my robotics club, I actually go over to elementary-schoolers and middle-schoolers, and they all kind of dart away as soon as they see me.”
His answer in that situation: dressing up as a tall cheerleader — complete with a tutu — to create a different persona.
A new statewide organization
Stafford isn’t the only school division in the Fredericksburg area to have student school board reps; for example, Spotsylvania’s School Board is just starting a program.
Stafford, however, is changing the way the reps serve. In the past, a student representative and alternate were chosen, but this year, Davis and Qureshi both will serve as equals.
Gabriella Irish
They will replace Gabriella Irish, who was the student representative, and Lillian Eason, who was the alternate.
But just because they will no longer be at school board meetings doesn’t mean they aren’t serving.
They have leadership positions in a new organization that aims to represent student school board reps throughout the state.
That’s the Virginia School Board Student Representatives Association. Eason is the group’s deputy executive director, and Irish is the events and meetings coordinator.
The pair worked with VSBSRA founder and executive director Caden Singleton of Abingdon to start the group after attending the Virginia School Boards Association’s annual convention in November.
They put the organization together to provide resources to other student reps and help support them, said Irish, a Stafford High senior who plans to study political science or public policy in college next school year.
Lillian Eason
“We realized that there’s a lot of school board representatives around the state who don’t really have a lot of guidance on what they’re doing,” Irish said.
The organization has about 28 student reps from around the state in a group chat, and the members hope to eventually hold an annual retreat as their elected counterparts do.
Singleton, a junior at Abingdon High School who serves as a junior school board representative on the Washington County School Board, said he would like to see every locality in Virginia eventually have student reps.
That would ensure that elected members of each school board would hear student opinions on educational issues, he said.
“So we want a bigger voice in that is what the goal is,” Singleton said.
Eason, a Brooke Point High School senior who plans to either attend college or go into the Air Force, said she would like to see a handbook or guidelines for student reps developed.
“Creating that common ground can definitely create a sense of unity, especially with maintaining equal opportunities for everybody,” she said.
