High school juniors make their voices heard at BC3
Sarah Lucas, an 11th-grade student at Butler County Area Vocational-Technical School, always has “something going on.”
Sarah juggles orchestra, track and field, and volleyball with honors classes, while working at Prima Capelli Salon and maintaining her own hairstyling business.
As a student, being able to express her ideas and have her voice heard is important, she said.
Along with about 100 other 11th-grade students in the district, Sarah attended the Student Leadership Retreat on Butler County Community College’s campus on Friday, mapping out goals and brainstorming initiatives for school improvements.
In groups, students discussed aspects of a “dream school,” their roles as students in relation to their teachers and communities, and frameworks for possible school projects.
Moving forward, students could choose to grow their ideas into possible projects through the year, said superintendent Brian White.
“The biggest point of today is to give students a voice in their school and community, in what they want and what they hope to accomplish,” White said.
“Sometimes we make decisions as institutions, and 20 years later, it’s the same thing,” he said.
The Student Leadership Retreat, made possible through a $70,000 grant from Remake Learning, will help make some changes, funnel in and implement student feedback, as well as initiate other projects slated for next year, White said.
He said many of the student-driven ideas shared Friday touched on belonging, career planning and student independence.
“It’s not just the teachers, it’s not just the staff — they do a good job, but there’s about 100 of them and 2,000 of us, so I feel like (students) need to have more of a role in everything,” Sarah said.
She said the opportunity to share ideas, generate student-led initiatives and talk among classmates throughout the day made her feel heard.
With her group, Sarah said she discussed the option of taking lunch in the courtyard of her school to enjoy the fresh air and sit on alumni benches rather than eating in the cafeteria. She said courtyard lunches could also be used as a student incentive for perfect attendance or good grades.
While taking a shortcut to go to a different class last week, Sarah said she realized it had been the first time she stepped foot in the courtyard all year.
“This is something that I think about a lot,” she said.
“We’re just trying to make the school a better place, trying to make it somewhere that everyone wants to be at, instead of somewhere that you think, ‘Oh, school, it’s like a prison — it’s like a job,’” said Butler Vo-Tech junior Caden Christie. “We want (school) to be more of a place where you go and you’re excited.”
“I want to make a lot of things more accessible, such as learning or even some amenities,” he said.
Al Vavro, president of the Butler Area School Board, said Friday the retreat offered a “bottom-up,” rather than a “top-down” structure to voicing concerns and submitting ideas about how schools are designed and spaces used.
“It’s a tremendous way for us to get to know what (students) are thinking and get to make them have ownership,” Vavro said. “If somebody saw somebody else always making the decisions, they don’t feel like they belong.”
