New CMS board’s student rep says this ‘vastly overlooked’ issue requires attention
Inchara Gopinath gives off an air of unflappability rare for a high school junior.
After two and a half years of speech and debate at North Mecklenburg High School, she’s learned how to approach conversations with a self-assured agility, and it shows. But, even she was nervous the day she got the phone call.
“I was definitely a little – well, totally – nervous,” Gopinath said. “They gave us an approximate estimate of when we would receive the call, and when 15 minutes had passed and I had not received my call yet, I began to feel very scared.”
She was waiting to find out if she’d won her election to be the 2026 student advisor to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education. Gopinath was in the running among 10 other finalists from high schools around the district, and all CMS high schoolers were eligible to cast a vote.
Eventually, her phone rang. It was Charles Jeter, executive director of government relations, policy and board communications for CMS.
“He had this very sorrowful tone,” Gopinath said. “He said, ‘It’s a pain to tell kids that they lost,’ and I began to feel my face become very stiff.”
She was near tears when Jeter changed his tune.
“‘But, I don’t have to tell you that because you won,’ he said,” Gopinath recalled, smiling. “That’s when I thought, ‘Okay, it’s going to be a long year with this guy.’”
Gopinath’s term will begin in January. The 2025 student advisor to the board, Lucy Silverstein, finished her term at the Dec. 9 board meeting. Silverstein is a senior at Providence High School in south Charlotte.
The student advisor position started in 2016 as a way for students to connect with the board and have their concerns represented. The student advisor attends each of the board’s meetings and can offer opinions on board decisions. However, the position is not a voting member of the board.
“Traditionally, when boards are talking about policies and things happening in schools, they’re not actually in the schools every day, but the students are. And, they can share their lived experience,” Amy Farrell, executive director of GenerationNation, previously told The Charlotte Observer.
Her organization was founded to help Charlotte-area students learn about civic engagement and leadership.
GenerationNation also runs the CMS student advisor election and helps candidates through the process of running a campaign.
This year for the first time, the student advisor election was done with “electoral votes,” rather than determined purely by popular vote alone. That way, students at more populous high schools didn’t have an advantage.
“After research, it was clear that it created a more level playing field from both large schools and small schools,” said Sheri Costa, director of CMS board communications. “All the finalists have something to offer.”
Gopinath said she’s excited to be an advocate for students and hopes to show her peers that they can make an impact in the school system.
“I want to bridge the gap between students in the district,” she said. “I think so many people overlook how hard CMS actually works to address students’ needs and I want to be that person who can be able to show them that we really do make a difference.”
Gopinath, who’s interested in psychology and wants to pursue a career medicine, also said she wants to focus on improving student mental health.
“I want to look at the stigma we have on mental health for students and how we can approach that,” she said. “I think that’s something that’s vastly overlooked in many student communities, and something that, as a student advisor, I can hopefully get closer to mending.”
More than that, Gopinath wants to inspire the district’s 140,000 students to feel confident sharing their own voices.
“I want students to have that confidence in being able to share their thoughts and feelings,” she said. “As a student at North Meck, I’ve had amazing teachers and classmates who have made me feel safe enough to share my thoughts, and I want other students across all schools to feel that way as well.”
