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Faith Mekonen, a rising senior at South County High School, will bring student concerns about grading, discipline and cellphone rules directly to the Fairfax County School Board during the 2025-26 school year.
The countywide Student Advisory Council elected Mekonen to a one-year term beginning July 1. She will participate in board meetings as a nonvoting member and become the board’s 55th student representative, succeeding Megan Sawant, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.
Mekonen said her priorities include reducing disparities in student discipline, expanding students’ influence on policy decisions, and helping implement revised grading and cellphone policies.
She has already worked on questions surrounding grading as a member of the Grading Standardization Advisory Committee. Debate has focused in part on retakes and whether grading practices are consistent among classrooms. Mekonen said the policy is intended to encourage equity and mastery-based learning, but teachers and students disagree over whether it is too restrictive or too lenient.
Her committee work has involved collaborating with students, educators and administrators to make the grading policy fair, effective and supportive of learning.
Mekonen also plans to collect student feedback through social media, surveys and the student representative newsletter. Drawing on her two years with the Student Advisory Council, she said she wants to ensure students’ views reach the board when decisions affect their education and well-being.
Her previous leadership and policy experience includes serving as vice president of South County’s Ethiopian & Eritrean Association and secretary of Model UN. She has also been a U.S. Department of Education youth adviser, a Harvard STRIPED youth policy translator and a participant in the FCPS School Board Student Leadership Development Program.
Mekonen’s other activities include becoming a Technology Student Association forensics state finalist, a Civics Unplugged fellow, a policy researcher for The Perrin Institution, a Los Angeles Times High School Insider and the Virginia legislative director for Voters of Tomorrow.