TOWSON, MD—Three BCPS juniors have emerged as the final candidates for student member of the Board of Education of Baltimore County for the 2023-2024 school year.

The finalists are:

• Nicholas Dimitriades of Towson High School,
• Kayla Drummond of Parkville High School,
• Nathan Harris of George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology

The trio were selected following application reviews and January 25 interviews with a panel of students and staff.

Dimitriades participates in the Law and Public Policy program at Towson High. He is an AP Scholar Award recipient and won the 2020 Baltimore County Bar Association Essay Contest. He serves as vice president of the Towson High Class of 2024 and as communications director for the school’s Model United Nations Conference, and he has been a member of the school’s law and public policy executive board during his freshman and junior years. He has been a member of the Towson High Model Congress Club and Model UN Club since 2020, and worked on the campaigns of both Katie Curran O’Malley for Maryland Attorney General and Peter Franchot for Maryland Governor.

Drummond has been an honor roll student at Parkville all three years she has been there and currently serves as a class officer and in leadership roles in the school’s AVID Club and Student Council, and in the One Love Club. She is a National Society of High School Scholars Ambassador and member of the Rho Kappa National Honor Society, and she has been a member of Parkville’s varsity and junior varsity cheerleading squads. Active in community service, she has volunteered at Manna House, the Love for Our Elders program, and at AVID Family Night. She has also worked as a camp counselor at the YMCA of Central Maryland.

Harris is also an honor roll student and is a member of the English National Honor Society and the Spanish Honor Society. He is the co-founder of the Modern Woman Project, an arts-based advocacy project focused on the struggles of women in the post-Covid era and works with artists, galleries, and non-profits to help raise funds for women’s organizations. Harris also is an AMP Global Scholar and has held leadership positions in the UNICEF Club, STAND (a student-led movement to end global mass atrocities), and the Peabody Dance Preparatory of Johns Hopkins University. He has participated in the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth and was class vice president in 2021-2022.

Middle and high school students will cast online ballots on Thursday, March 23, for one of the three candidates. This is the third year, due to a change in Maryland law, that BCPS students will directly select the student member of the Board without approval from the governor.

Videotaped speeches from the two candidates will be available online, on BCPS-TV, and in selected English language arts and social studies classes from Tuesday, February 21, to Friday, February 24. Also during that week, middle and high school students will be able to submit questions to the three candidates. Videos of the candidates answering selected questions will be available for online viewing on Thursday, March 23. On that same day, student voting will take place online from 7 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.