This fall, a team of youth and adult facilitators from UP for Learning (UP) brought together all of the student leadership councils at BFA St Albans, the high school in the Maple Run Unified School District. This was the first time all the student leadership councils (Student Voice Committee, Athletic Leadership, Student Government, Spirit Council, Dance Council, Senior Events Council) were in the same room at the same time. The retreat focused on building a shared vision, mission and goals, and coordinating roles and responsibilities for the work going forward by developing and sharing work/action plans. 

UP’s work with Maple Run started back in the 2022-2023 school year when UP joined the district’s Student Voice Committee (SVC) to help them fulfill their mission: to create a  sustainable way to maintain youth voice in the school district. The work of the SVC quickly blossomed to include all three of the district’s middle schools in hopes of engaging as many students as possible in the decision making process. At the end of the 2023-2024 school year, SVC expanded its reach and membership, and set the next steps in motion by welcoming and orienting the new committee members at an UP work session c0-designed by current SVC members to be fun with team building activities such as group juggling, along with other activities to set the stage for a productive and engaging school year.

Fast forward to this school year, UP’s work expanded to all the student leadership councils with the goal to expand leadership capacity and agency amongst all students. At the same time, UP is still working with the SVC to expand capacity for leadership in the middle schools. 

The success of UP’s first retreat with all the student leadership councils is already being felt. There have been more frequent and better attended school culture events. The Student Government Council has sent out surveys and identified projects to work on this year like revisiting  school resource officers, increasing lunch time, better seating options for students, and thinking about creating the best Personalized Learning Plan (PLP) experience possible. The SVC has started thinking about expanding basic needs and resources for all students and expanding support in both the middle and high schools. SVC and the leadership councils have also sent out feedback forms to middle school students asking, “What are you excited about when you think about coming to BFA, and What are you nervous about?” 

Additionally, the work of the student councils at BFA has led to a Getting to ‘Y’ (GTY) team to be established at the school. The group of students working on GTY have had their first initial retreat and are actively working on planning their community dialogue event to further go over the data that was discovered at the GTY retreat. Students in the GTY group have expressed that taking the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) and having students review the data and make data-driven change is a new but empowering concept. 

Driving their work with the data they have collected through these surveys and conversations, the SVC members represent students on Maple Run’s school board by reporting about the student experience along with all the great things the councils have put in motion.  

In all these ways, the Student Councils across the high school have broadened opportunities for all students and deepened learning in leadership and facilitation to strengthen youth voice and advocacy as they take a seat at the decision making table. Together, they have made progress on their shared aspirations:

  • Empowering students by listening to one another
  • Communicating the purpose, process and outcomes of the student councils
  • Contributing to a healthy and sustainable learning environment 
  • Prioritizing student health
  • Increasing the presence of the student councils in the sending schools
  • Resolving issues to help make the school work for everyone