By the close of the ‘22-’23 school year, the BFA St. Albans Student Voice Committee (SVC) had fulfilled their mission “to establish a process to sustain student voice in decision-making for Maple Run Unified School District (MRUSD) by making ourselves known to the community and creating a sustainable process for recruitment.”

At the start of their work this year, the newly formed team with expanded representation began by revisiting the mission and discussing an updated statement that will focus on the next steps in fulfilling their vision to empower students, to listen, communicate and contribute to a healthy and sustainable learning environment, to build youth-adult partnership, to prioritize student health and to facilitate learning – all while keeping an eye on the central issues of equity and inclusion, voice and agency.  They captured these aspirations and commitments by repeating the phrase “I will create a space” for all this to happen.

To do so, the SVC met and agreed to a framework for their work in the ‘23-’24 school year.  That framework includes: identifying objectives, key results, and success measures for the year, looking at key results to gauge how they are doing and what they can adjust to meet their goals, celebrating accomplishments and reflecting on the year,  and considering what to focus on for the following year. 

During their work session with UP for Learning on October 11th, they developed work plans to achieve their short-term goals: to connect with middle school student leadership, host community student forums, and be a part of the MRUSD strategic planning process.

They also discussed data collection and evaluation plans to monitor success of their long-term goals: to represent all schools in MRUSD to help make change for students, combine student leadership across MRUSD and within BFA St Albans, carry out the Youth Participatory Action Research process beginning with  surveying students’ wants and needs, help to bring better world language options to the middle schools, and help determine furniture and other capital expenses.

UP for Learning is honored to be their partner in this powerful work.  

By Harry Frank, Program Director