Before 18-year-olds won the right to vote last summer, not a single school board in the country had a student member. As of now, there are 13 of them, and more than 100 other teenagers are expected to campaign for school-board vacancies this spring.
Some of the innovations proposed by student members are startling. The most controversial of the newcomers is Newark's Larry Hamm, 18, a black student at Rutgers University, who attracted widespread criticism by calling for Black Nationalist liberation flags to be flown in every Newark schoolroom where black pupils form a...