One council meeting in, 2018 is already shaping up to be an interesting and potentially heated year for the legislative arm of Boston city government.

On Wednesday, Boston City Council convened with a newly-constituted body, consisting of three new members and a new council president — District 4 Councilor Andrea Campbell — and a seemingly renewed appetite to push the city agenda, potentially past where Boston Mayor Marty Walsh would have it.

Last year, council members passed a plastic bag ban without Walsh’s support (he eventually signed the measure), prodded the mayor to support a 1 percent property tax surcharge under the Community Preservation Act (he came to support it), and bristled as a city "pilot" test of police body cameras dragged on.

Several council members also used their last meeting of 2017 to offer harsh criticism of the Boston Public Schools administration’s attempted roll-out — later abandoned — of new school start times.

That controversy was not far from councilors’ minds when, Wednesday, at-large city councilor Annissa Essaibi-George introduced an order for hearings on whether the Boston School Committee should remain, as it has since the 1990s, appointed by the mayor; or whether the body should be elected, as are most school committees in Massachusetts.

It was an issue frequently brought up by former City Councilor and mayoral contender Tito Jackson, whose seat as chairman of the council’s education committee Essaibi-George now occupies.

Jackson’s critiques of the mayor-appointed committee frequently came as broadsides launched directly at Walsh, at least during the campaign.

Essaibi-George, along with many of her colleagues on the council, is taking a different approach, calling for hearings on the question of an elected or appointed committee without opining as to which system would be better for Boston’s public schools and the children they serve.

Speaking with WGBH News after the meeting, Essaibi-George, a parent of three Boston Public Schools students herself, said, "so many parents across the city who aren’t city councilors feel disconnected from the work that is before the school committee, feel disconnected and not heard by our superintendent."

Walsh spokesperson Nicole Caravella told WGBH News in a statement that Walsh "believes that the school committee should be appointed so politics stay out of the city’s education system, and the people of Boston have voted twice in support of an appointed school committee."

Any potential change to the structure of the school committee would require a home-rule petition, which must be approved by the state legislature, and, as Essaibi-George acknowledged, would take significant time to effect.