Eight students are out to change the school.
Four weeks into the new school year, a group of students flew 2,500 miles southwest to share and hear ideas for closing achievement gaps in high schools. Now, they are hoping to implement changes to ameliorate differences in academic achievement among races at BHS.
The students, who are part of either the African-American Scholars Program, METCO or Steps to Success, attended the Minority Student Achievement Network conference, chaperoned by advisers AASP Director Chris Vick and Steps to Success Head Carrie Weatherhead. This year, the event was hosted by the Paradise Valley Unified School District in Phoenix, Arizona from Oct. 3 to 6.
At this annual conference, students from 25 districts all across the country participated. “Students get together and discuss ‘what’s going on in my school with achievement gap,’ ‘what we are doing,’ and ‘what can we do,’” African-American Scholars Program Director Chris Vick said.
According to Vick, this conference was largely student-driven.
“Our generation is the one that has caused and expanded this achievement gap,” he said. “So we are not going to be the ones who can stop it. It’s mostly the young folks who are greatly impacted by and have to solve this achievement gap.”
Steps to Success Coordinator Carrie Weatherhead added that “students lead the discussion, they build the action plans, they listen to the speakers, it’s entirely a student conference.”
Senior Sara Diskant said that the event was a great opportunity.
“It was awesome to talk with other districts about what problems they were having and also see what they were doing right that we could bring back to our school,” she said.
According to Weatherhead, based on findings from the conference, students develop an action plan to be presented to school administrators.
“They are meeting with the superintendent and school’s leadership teams in November, and then meeting with the school committee in December,” Weatherhead said.
The team is scheduled to present action plans in four categories of issues: technology gap, low number of teachers of color, improving parent participation, and putting more students of color in honors and Advanced Placement courses.
“With the superintendent, they’ll work to figure out which actions they can take, what role they want to take in each action,” Weatherhead said.
One specific solution from another district that could be implemented, Diskant said, is the parent education program. It offers incentives such as low-cost internet and laptops for parents who are willing to attend classes that will teach them how to help their kids do better in schools and how to motivate them properly.
The document detailing their action plans will be available on thecypressonline.com after it is released to the public.
Vick said he was impressed by the students at the conference.
“We had a fantastic contingent of really smart young folks,” he said. “They were really serious about making our district better. That was a good thing.”
Next year, the conference is scheduled to be hosted in Amherst, MA.
Although BHS is doing well compared to other schools, it still has long way to go, according to senior Matthew Brown.
“It sounded like a lot of people were learning from us,” he said. “But then I also found that we are slacking in a lot of things. Brookline High School is not a perfect school yet.”
Paul Kim can be contacted at [email protected].
