Category — Student Voice

I’ve been involved with PPS for over 2o years and I’ve never been more impressed with a Student Representative than I am with Dina Yazdani.  Her parents must be very proud.  Dina has more wisdom and courage than the majority of the board.  What a shame that her vote doesn’t count.  Here’s her student representative report for this Monday’s meeting:

Student Representative Report

SuperSAC had a great turn-out this Monday, with 10 students from around the District.  The schools represented were: Wilson, Benson, Lincoln, Jefferson, Mt. Tabor, Sunnyside, and Grant. After being a member of SuperSAC for 3 years now, I can honestly say this was one of the most diverse groups.

The first topic we discussed was the biggest challenges students face today, and the most common challenges brought up were lack of motivation, class sizes, segregation, the grading system and inequity. Students also came up with solutions for these challenges. We said that we need more funding, without a doubt, before real, impactful change can be made on our educational system. The Wilson representative suggested that in order for more schools to gain more opportunities, that wealthier schools essentially need to spread the wealth. Other solutions, with or without funding, that need to be put in place were more outreach programs from businesses and organizations to inspire students to find a career they would be interested in. Other solutions brought up were more wrap-around-services, proficiency grading, and freshman academies.

One issue on everyone’s mind was High School System Design. We all felt that during this process there was a lack of transparency of what exactly the proposal would do, and what the Board’s vote on the resolutions actually meant. Students felt excluded from the community input process, because student input obviously did not make much of an impact on the Board’s decision. The Benson students weighed in on the impact the proposal would have on their school: First, they don’t understand how the Board could vote on a resolution as ambiguous as it was on declaring the changes that would be made to Benson. They pointed out that if the Board were to limit Benson to two “career strands” or majors, it would be taking away a majority of classes from Benson. Another part of the proposal that was met with skepticism was Jefferson becoming a middle college. The Jefferson representatives felt that it wouldn’t change anything but only make Jefferson worse because it would be taking away their dance, and arts program. As one student pointed out, why should there be a middle college when you could put AP/IB classes in Jefferson, which are both college credits.  

Equity was also a hot topic. One student said, “We all have the same vision; to go to a school that will take us where we want to go”, but unfortunately not every school provides that vision. We reminisced the 1980’s, where our teachers would talk about how every school had a magnet program, every school had opportunities another didn’t and transferring was easy but done in a way so there was still diversity in every school.  We wondered what changed, and we blame the lack of school funding. To deal with matters as they are, one student said that we need to take away from schools that have everything, in order to make all the schools equal. Just about everyone agreed.  On the topic of inequity, we agreed that the next SuperSAC meeting on December 6th will revolve around race, and the achievement gap where we plan on discussing in particular what the closure of Marshall will mean for students from lower-socio economics. SuperSAC will also be meeting a second time this month to plan a community meeting for students to learn more about the changes that will be made, be able to have a discussion, ask questions, and have the Superintendent, Chief of Staff Zeke Smith, and Board members present to hear their concerns and ideas on how to move forward.

As one of the Jefferson representatives said, we all have the same vision of going to a good school that will be a pathway for a good future. We see never-ending budget cuts, inequity among schools, the achievement gap and the lack of student voice in decision-making process obstacles to achieving that vision. To break that barrier, we plan on having the loudest voice this year, because as students, we live in our educational system every day, we know the challenges, and we know how to solve them.

Thank you.

Dina Yazdani