Anuva Maloo, a rising senior at Silver Spring’s Montgomery Blair High School, has known she wanted to serve on the Montgomery County Board of Education as its student representative since she was in middle school, but achieving that goal seemed impossible.
The impossible became reality on Tuesday night when Maloo was sworn in as the 48th student member of the school board for the 2025-2026 school year during a ceremony at the board’s Rockville headquarters.
“I’m elated,” Maloo told Bethesda Today after the swearing-in ceremony. “I mostly just feel really grateful, though. I mean, I met so many [previous student members of the board] today, and I know it’s a huge role to fill, and it’s going to take a lot of hard work, but I’m ready to put the work in.”
Maloo was elected in April to serve as the student representative on the school board. She defeated Peter Boyko, then a junior at Northwest High School in Germantown, to win the seat on the eight-member board. The pair were elected as the two finalists for the seat by more than 400 middle and high school delegates who attended a nominating convention in February at Watkins Mill High School in Gaithersburg.
All middle and high school students were eligible to vote in the election, according to Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). More than 61,000 students cast ballots in the April election, with Maloo receiving 62% of the vote and 38% going to Boyko.
The student member of the board serves a one-year term and can vote on topics related to “collective bargaining, capital and operating budgets, and school closings, reopenings and boundaries but not on negative personnel actions,” according to the MCPS website.
Montgomery County is one of just two Maryland counties that assign full voting rights to a student board member. The student member isn’t paid but receives a $25,000 college scholarship, service-learning hours toward the state’s 75-hour graduation requirement and one honors-level social studies credit.
Maloo, who lives within the district’s Northeast Consortium (NEC) but attends the math, science and computer science magnet program at Blair, is president of her class and serves as a workshop deputy for the Montgomery County Regional Student Government Association, according to MCPS. She is the founder and president of the Northeast Consortium and Downcounty Consortium Advocacy Coalition (NDAC) and the outreach director for the Yellow Foundation, an international organization focused on assisting young people in poverty.
Maloo said the first issue that she would focus on as a board member is the school district’s ongoing program analysis and boundary study.
“That’s a big thing that I’m very excited to look at, especially with my experience and my background and how I’ve grown up,” Maloo said. “I’ve experienced so many different students’ lives … I know how much my voice is going to matter.”
Board members said they were looking forward to working with Maloo.
“I love her energy. I love how she brings her lived experience into our conversation,” board President Julie Yang said Tuesday night during the ceremony.
Maloo is taking over the seat from recent Clarksburg High School graduate Praneel Suvarna, who was honored Tuesday night after completing his one-year term.
“Holding this position and more importantly, holding the trust of over 160,000 students has been one of the greatest privileges of my life,” Suvarna said during the ceremony. “It’s hard to put into words what this year has meant to me.”
Board member Brenda Wolff described Suvarna as the “most professional and congenial person on this board at the moment.”
“He always has his homework done. His questions and arguments are right on point, but his tone is always, always respectful of everyone’s opinion,” Wolff said. “He’s been a champion for the student voice.”
As Maloo assumes her post, she said she wants students to know that she is “always here” to represent them.
“Bottom line is, you voted for me to represent your ideas, and obviously I do have my own, but I can’t formulate them all without listening to the students’ opinions because that’s what I’m here to do as a student member of the board,” she said.
