One Boston School Committee seat will be open for applications for one more week following the departure of member Chantal Lima-Barbosa last month.

The new committee member will begin around the start of the 2025-26 school year and serve through the remainder of Lima-Barbosa’s four-year term ending in January 2028.

“Applications are now open for the Boston School Committee!” the City of Boston announced in an X post. “Serving on the School Committee is an incredible opportunity to keep building a Boston for all students and to make a meaningful impact on our BPS community.”

The application will remain open through Aug. 8 at 11:59 p.m.

Boston School Committee member candidates are chosen by a nominating panel, which the city describes as a group of families, educators, school leaders, and business and higher ed representatives. The Mayor then selects from the list of nominations.

Lima Barbosa was the most recently selected member of the School Committee, taking over a vacated seat in Aug. 2023. She became the first Cabo Verdean woman to serve on the committee.

“I’ve gotten an opportunity that unfortunately, I’ll have to leave the city for, making me ineligible to continue to serve as a member of the Boston School Committee,” Lima-Barbosa told the School Committee at a June meeting.

Other School Committee members noted Lima-Barbosa came back as a BPS alumni and complimented her commitment to community engagement and student voice.

“I’m very grateful for being able to be here and represent my community voice, a lot of voices that often are forgotten, and fight the good fight,” Lima-Barbosa said. “I know there’s a lot that still needs to be done, so that’s the hard part, leaving and feeling that there’s things that I still want to be able to participate in.”

The School Committee vacancy comes as the Boston mayoral race has once again stirred debate over the elected body. Candidate Josh Kraft has supported a hybrid elected-appointed school committee structure.

Mayor Michelle Wu has not supported a fully elected school committee, vetoing a proposal passed by the Boston City Council in 2023.

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Overturning the elected school committee structure in 1991, Boston remains the only school district in the state with a non-elected governing board and one of the few left among major U.S. cities. In 2021, voters supported a nonbinding ballot question seeking an elected school committee by nearly 80%.

In a recent Suffolk/Boston Globe CityView Poll released in July, about 52% of respondents favored a hybrid elected-appointed school committee. Another 35% supported a fully elected school committee and just 8% supported the current appointed model.