Students from around the nation who are frustrated with their hometown school districts should take a page out of Central Michigan University student Hayley Alderman’s playbook and run for political office.

Despite being 20-years-old, the Fort Gratiot senior believes her age and relatively recent graduation from Port Huron High School in 2012 is nothing but an asset.

“(After sophomore year of high school), that was when I realized there was a real disconnect from the realities of the classroom and the policies the board was implementing and how it was affecting my fellow students,” Alderman said.

Alderman, who is the executive vice president of College Democrats at CMU, is aiming to nab one of the three Board of Education seats up for grabs in the Port Huron Area School District.

She is one of six contestants for the positions, while three of her opponents are incumbents.

Juggling between her responsibilities as a student and working, campaigning has not been easy, but Alderman said she finds a way to make it work.

Since spring classes finished in May, Alderman said she averaged between three and four hours campaigning every weekday in the summer. She spent closer to seven hours a day placing phone calls, passing out flyers and other awareness raising activities such as parades during the weekends.

Despite an increased workload now that the fall semester has begun, Alderman said the massive amount of support she has received from family, friends and strangers invigorates her efforts.

“With every door I knock, I’m more and more reassured that people want change in our school district,” Alderman said. “I asked this one woman if she wanted a yard sign and she responded ‘you could put a billboard in my yard, honey.’”

Alderman’s efforts have left an impression among a number individuals, including Political Science professor David Jesuit.

“I think (taking the initiative to run her own campaign) is great,” Jesuit said. “I think it’s important for young people to realize they have an opportunity to get involved in politics, so I think it’s great, at whatever level.”

Jesuit said he selected Alderman as head delegate for the nation of Italy in his model United Nations course due to her intelligence and leadership skills.

In the model U.N., Alderman served as the chief voice of Italy and competed against thousands of other students.

Alderman said she is determined to win one of school board’s contested seats, regardless of the extra burden that may push onto her.

“It may mean that I have to take a drive home to campaign every weekend," she said, "but that is something that I am prepared to do.”

College Democrats at CMU president Sam McNerney said he was thrilled to have had the opportunity to assist Alderman on her campaign trail.

McNerney said helping Alderman knock on doors throughout Port Huron in addition to campaigning at the Blue Water Fest yielded some personally unexpected results.

“It was honestly really excited to see how pumped up everybody was when we were knocking,” McNerney said. “You think that most adults will say, ‘you’re so young, you should wait.' That’s not really the atmosphere I felt when working for her. it was more like, ‘we recognize there’s something really wrong here and regardless of your age, we recognize you want to change that.’”

Alderman said a primary motivation for her campaign is a perceived disconnect among the board and the reality of the classroom.

She said at one point, the district replaced one administrator earning a six-figure salary, who was replaced by two administrators performing essentially the same task(s), while each earned a six-figure salary.

Such acts place administrators and with increasingly greater pay above the needs of students and teachers and Alderman said change in the district is needed.

Alderman will be campaigning while finishing her classes at CMU.