The Principal Student Advisor Council is now known as the Student Leadership Team (SLT) this year. Students in the team will actively meet and work with Principal Jeremy Christian to shape the school that best fits their needs. This club will be focusing on in-school and district-wide issues students face that will be addressed and altered. The team consists of students who deeply care to bring change within the school and are determined to do so.
Seniors Alex Sanchez and Anisa Sebaggala, along with junior Nabiah Shiekh, take charge of SLT to recruit members, schedule when to meet, and facilitate the overall team. They have been working side by side with Principal Christian to start the team and begin the process of addressing issues they believe should be changed. The team is currently interviewing students who are interested in joining.
“Anybody can join, the reason we do interviews is to ensure that there is an equal representation of all grade levels,” Sanchez said
A student-based leadership team is crucial for the administration to view and understand conflicts that students face day to day, which they might not recognize from their position.
“In SLT, our main goal is giving voice to the entire student population. We want students to be in rooms with the administrators [and] making decisions that impact us,” Sebaggala said.
Although Principal Christian is a part of the SLT, he wants this to be completely student-led, where students pitch ideas and his role is to help and guide them.
“It’s all about the students, and the students leading. So the decisions or ideas that they bring to me will be things that we can collaborate with the student government and it will be all organic. Some have already brought up issues such as how we can improve our study hall space. Any issue brought to me that is within the school level, we will change it and if it’s something I need to help us argue for, we will go to the district office and will do that. This is your school, and I want to be here to champion that. For the most part, I want students to feel comfortable at school,” Christian said.
The SLT is meant to be a voice for everyone around the school, which is Christian’s optimal goal.
“I want them [the Student Leadership Team] to be honest, but more importantly, I want them to bring ideas from the student body collectively, not a group of students. There are 2,700 students in this school and everyone’s voice matters,” Christian said.
The team already has a few issues they would like to tackle this year. One of them includes the ongoing bus conflicts that many students face.
“As of right now, some of the big issues I want to bring up are early bird busses or the bus system in general. This is because the school did change early bird timings on late start days to 10 minutes earlier compared to last school year. However, the bus routes don’t start 10 minutes earlier so now students are arriving late to early bird classes, therefore missing important class time,” Sheikh said.
Another issue they found around the school is the lack of awareness about social workers. Many students don’t know much about the social workers at school or how to contact them.
“We also want to make more awareness of mental health services provided at the school, as not that many students know that they are available. In fact, I don’t think I have even met any of the social workers at our school,” Sheikh said.
Sebaggala mentions how she wants students to feel safe around the school and the team will be working on ways to ensure that the student body feels protected.
“One thing we want to do is make sure all students feel comfortable reporting incidents. We plan to instill a system into the school where students can anonymously speak up when they see something that is wrong. When we don’t speak up for others in need, our school community will never be able to grow together,” Sebaggala said.
The team plans on bringing change through a step-by-step process where not just students, but everyone around the school is involved and aware of.
“We would meet as a team and discuss what issues there are, and then brainstorm possible solutions. From there, we would bring it up to a small group of teachers in a team building meeting where they can put up their input on how that impacts them. If that entire idea proposed is given positive feedback, we will then bring it up to the administration where they give the final approval,” Sanchez said.
Involving all members of the school is essential because everyone at school is affected by change to a certain extent.
“Ultimately, every change that occurs within the school affects the staff and the students the most. Therefore, bringing it up from the students to the teachers first to get their input, since it impacts them, is crucial,” Sheikh said.
