Student Council is a hardworking part of U-32’s school community, and a voice for the students. They work on several projects at a time to better the student experience, and rely on admin and their fellow students to get it done.
Student Council Projects
Student Council have specific goals in mind in whatever projects they do. They are elected by the students, and they always want to work to do the best thing for the student body.
“Our job is to focus in on what students want and what they need to better be able to go about their everyday life within school,” said Kai LaRosa, a Junior who has been on Student Council since he was in eighth grade.
The Student Council has been working on several new projects recently. They reached out to do a panel including Steven Dellinger-Pate and Ela Chapin about the upcoming school budget.
They also sent a representative to the Rowland Conference. The Rowland Conference is an annual one-day educational conference held at UVM. It includes workshops where students and educators who are interested in improving their school’s culture can discuss with practitioners to make a difference in their schools.
The Student Council is also in the process of reworking the first days of school which have been field trips in the past couple years.. With student input, they hope to come up with a better plan that suits the student body. This project is called Smart Start.
Another project they are working on is a career day where students can explore the careers that interest them. A survey was sent out on Nov 5th to collect information on what careers students would be most interested in exploring. Career day will also likely have a career fair aspect involved.
They are also working with Tony Snow, the Dean of Students, to expand the areas students can eat during lunch. This expansion would potentially include outside the front of the school, at the picnic tables.
With all of these projects underway, the Student Council needs input from the general student body. Kai urges students to come to their Student Council representatives.
“We are more than happy to listen. You just need to reach out to us, or else we won’t know what’s going on,” he said.
Working with the student body is a very important part of what they do.
“A lot of the stuff we do is just setting up callbacks to give information to all the students and sending out surveys to get student input on what we would like to change,” said Margo Cannella, a Sophomore Student Council representative. Student Council is always looking for more suggestions from other students.
Kai stated, “We just need students to give us a base point on what they want to see change.”
Communication with Administration
The U-32 Student Council has been running into issues with the administration. Although they have many projects underway, communication with admin has been affecting their work. In order to do what is best for the student body, Student Council has to work with the administrators to get things done.
They work with admin to send out surveys, gather information, and to work to change rules or relay information to the rest of the students. Recently, communication between administrators and the Student Council has been an issue. Kai said, “I feel that there isn’t a very strong communication with admin.”
Other members of Student Council agree with this. “As a Student Council, we want to work with admin because that’s what we’re supposed to do, but it’s hard to get [in] contact with them and schedule callbacks. So we definitely want to strengthen our relationship with them,” said Elsa Young, an eighth grade representative.
It has not been like this for every issue. “We have had a lot of super great communication from the administration, specifically Becca, about the career day and the club fair and even reorganizing Smart Start, which is the start of school,” stated Kathryn Stauffer, one of the Junior Student Council representatives.
Despite this, the Student Council has found it very difficult to get closure on certain issues in particular, and communication quality seems very based on the subject it involves. “There’s been a lot less communication […] about the phone bill and student involvement in that. So I think that is where the difference really lies,” said Kathryn.
Student Council has also often felt that admin expects a lot from them with this level of communication. “They expect us to do a lot, but they don’t exactly coordinate with us,” said Senior representative Pearl Jackes.
Many members of the council feel like the administration treats Student Council unfairly. Kathryn said, “If an administrator has an idea that they think Student Council should be working on obviously that’s great, but I think sometimes they just […] throw it on us and don’t always back it up with communication.”
