BRUNSWICK — As parents, town leaders and school officials work to shape the future of Brunswick’s schools in the face of a $3 million revenue shortfall, School Board student liaison Julia Brown strives to ensure that students’ perspectives will factor into the outcome.

“We get voices all the time of Realtors, business owners, parents,” Brown said, “but we need to broaden the spectrum for students, too.”

As the district looks to close a nearly $3 million budget gap with a mixture of incentives for teacher retirement, staff reductions and cuts to programs — including, potentially, sports and Advanced Placement offerings — Brown said she’d like to see more direct involvement from students.

Through guerrilla Facebook messaging — with no formal page or group — Brown said she sent out an invitation to students to submit their input via email to School Board representatives. She calls it the “I’m Listening” campaign.

Meghan McGuire, a junior, said she responded to that call for input out of concern that AP French will be cut next year.

“I have been following French all through school and I was looking to that so I could test out of French in college and advance faster,” McGuire said. “The biggest disappointment was seeing how much the foreign language department could suffer because of (the proposed budget reductions).”

McGuire said her parents have been involved in the process as well.

However, after sending an email to her School Board representative stating that she would like to be involved in the process, McGuire said it’s unclear how she should proceed in making her case for retaining AP courses like calculus.

For students who have worked through the first year of college level calculus by junior year, she said, there would be no further math class for them to take during senior year.

“Friends and I have been talking about and thought about writing letters to the editor and starting to work on these things,” McGuire said.

In response to her email, McGuire said she received thanks and appreciation for being a teen interested in school board affairs, but the direction ahead is unclear.

Brown, the first student liaison to the School Board, said her role has not only been to bring student viewpoints to the board, but also to explain School Board operations to students — how the budget process works, when to get involved and what might have to be sacrificed if, say, AP classes were to be retained.

“For the kids who are scared about next year, I ask how they think we can change it,” Brown said. “I tell them, ‘Well, here’s your options: we can cut these things, but here’s the effect, or we can say we want more town money or we can raise property tax.’ And they muddle it over and tell me what they think.”

In general, Brown, who is due to graduate in June, said the goal of the “I’m Listening” campaign is to elevate discussion of students to the School Board and fight for involvement she said has been her mission as the student liaison.

“The main goal is to break the stereotype,” Brown wrote in her invitation for students to send her their input on the budget process. “If students are respected and trusted by the board, they will take us more seriously when we want to talk about cuts.”

A proposal to eliminate freshmen athletic programs in 2012-13 is among the proposed cuts being considered.

“If we get 100 kids to a meeting to talk about not cutting sports, it means nothing if we don’t have credibility,” Brown wrote.

But most fundamentally, Brown said, the campaign is an early lesson in civics.

“Just by sending out these messages, students are learning about their right to contact their School Board member,” Brown wrote. “Students, along with the rest of the community, need to learn the value of youth voice. The only thing stopping us is the perception that we can’t/are too stupid/lazy to accomplish something.”

dfishell@timesrecord.com