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How many school board meetings have you watched over the last couple of years? School board meetings where parents yell about Covid?

It's time to take these masks off of my child. Yellowbuck critical race theory. You created a curriculum of black panther indoctrination. You use tax payers dollars.

School board meetings where parents try to remove library books.

Public schools have vivid pornography in it and these countries will do anything about it. You're demoralizing them by teaching them communist values. This is still America, ma'am.

I have no problem having a peaceful discussion. This is not a peaceful discussion. No, that's your opinion. See here we go again.

Now, imagine watching those same school board meetings as a teenager and all those high stakes conversations, all the yelling. It's about you, your classroom, your teachers.

Hey, Shiva. Hi, my name is Alria. Good. Did you press record? So we're ready to go. Now, you know how Shiva Raj Bandari feels.

I am recording on my end. I want to respect your time because I know that you have school and you now have an after school job. So I know you're busy.

Yeah, yeah, I got to like 730, 330 minutes.

What is new after school job is that he's on his local school board, a duly elected member at just 18 years old. But before I get into all that, it helps to know where Shiva is. Boise Idaho.

Living in Boise is really interesting because it's a very progressive community here. But surrounding us almost on all sides, we're seeing a lot of these really far right attacks on our schools.

In some ways, these far right attacks feel familiar. Idaho passed an anti critical race theory bill and the state's lieutenant governor started an indoctrination task force to investigate public schools.

But a lot of what's going on in this state has a distinctly Idaho in flavor.

The Ohio Freedom Foundation, which controls a lot of the politics of our state, really has this angle of abolishing education altogether.

Public education. Yeah, public education. And I think they really took advantage of that during the pandemic.

And I'm talking about the way that education is being weaponized for political gain in their state. This is the environment in which Shiva decided, yeah, I'll run for office.

And to be clear, it's not unheard of for students to be on their local school boards, but a teenager unseating an incumbent. That is rare.

You know, I've been following some of the news coverage of your election. And I think my favorite bit was a local news anchor who compared what happened with you to the plot of a Disney Channel original movie.

Like the plot of a Disney Channel original movie, a high school kid wins an elected seat to a local school board. But that's the real story. Yeah, that was interesting.

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