Wa-Hi sophomore Siri Mouat named to WA Board of Education

Siri Mouat wants every student to have a fair chance at being successful in the future.

She will soon have the opportunity to advocate for exactly that on a statewide scale as the newest student board member for the Washington State Board of Education.

Mouat, a Walla Walla High School sophomore, will serve a two-year term as one of two student board members who represent their peers across the state. She was selected from about 90 applicants for the position, which she applied for because of her passion for equity in education.

"I'm a firm believer that the quality of your education should not be defined by your financial situation or the barriers you might experience based on your location or whatever it may be," Mouat said. "I think that high quality education is a right, and I really appreciate that the State Board of Education in Washington has given me the opportunity to have an impact in that."

As a student board member for the state, Mouat will be representing the more than one million K-12 students in Washington. The two student board members attend every board meeting, actively participate, share opinions and have the same voting power as the other board members.

"We get to be a part of action committees and do separate work. A big part of it is being able to connect and communicate and engage with students from across the state," Mouat said. "So we get to help organize or attend different community outreach, maybe public forums with students, families, community members, schools, so that we can best hear their voices so that we can better represent them."

Mouat grew up in Walla Walla attending Berney Elementary and Pioneer Middle schools and is the child of Wa-Hi English teacher Jennifer Mouat. In the future, Mouat hopes to pursue educational administration as a career and possibly become a superintendent one day.

"I know that I love working with kids and community members, and I want a future career that is different every day, that is exciting, that is meaningful to me, that allows me to feel like I'm making a difference in my community and to feel like I'm actually helping people," Mouat said. "For the past two years, I've been on the Superintendent Advisory Council and I've gotten to work with Dr. (Ben) Gauyan and Dr. (Wade) Smith and kind of see into what their daily work looks like, and I've really enjoyed that space."

Outside of class, Mouat likes to participate in local and school theater, Future Business Leaders of America, and Youth and Government.

"In Youth and Government, I get to work a lot with advocacy and legislation and people from around the state," Mouat said. "In FBLA, I do a lot of public speaking. Specifically, my favorite event is impromptu speaking, because it mixes very well with my love of theater."

In the summers, Mouat works as a camp counselor for the Walla Walla Little Theatre's kids' camp.

Her term with the State Board of Education will span the 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 school years, ending when she graduates high school.

As a state board member, Mouat aims to continue working on the type of advocacy that she's already been doing on a smaller scale in Walla Walla.

As a member of the Superintendent Student Advisory Council, Mouat has spent the past two years working on increasing diversity in Advanced Placement and honors classes. She said the committee has realized that to achieve that goal, the work has to start before high school.

"What we've been working on is making honors classes in middle school a choice - something that students can take the initiative to opt into, something that students who feel motivated, who are interested and curious, can choose to go into rather than it being decided by a standardized test," Mouat said.

She said that for many students, standardized testing might not be the best measure of their capabilities. If they don't have someone such as a parent advocating for them, she said, students could end up getting placed into and then sticking with general education classes because of those test scores.

"They're told that because of that test score, they're not capable of doing something more, even when it's something they're passionate about that they want to learn more in depth about," Mouat said. "And then when they get to high school, these students don't opt into more rigorous courses because that's what they've been told."

She said that more often than not, students of color and students from lower socioeconomic statuses are the groups who are not tracked to go into honors classes.

"Even at Wa-Hi, we have about half of our students that are of color, and it is not shown in our AP and honors classes," Mouat said. "They are disproportionately white."

The Superintendent Student Advisory Council is now working with administrators in Walla Walla middle schools to find out what is possible in terms of diversifying AP and honors classes and how students are tracked for those courses.

As Mouat steps into her new role on the state board, she said she wants the students of Washington to know that they can talk to her, they can reach out, they can share their opinions with her, and they can disagree with her.

She hopes to work with the junior board representative to visit schools and talk to kids of all different ages to get their opinions on decisions that the state board might be making.

"I will listen to them fully and try to represent as many students as I can in the best way possible," Mouat said.

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