Ashlyn Connor, 11
Make spirit days relevant
“Meme Day — I feel like memes kinda died out,” Connor said. “Like, ‘performative male,’ a TikTok trend, [we should do] more things based off that. I watched someone dress up like a Labubu. ‘Duo days,’ like ‘rhyme without reason’ — that’s a little more relevant.”
AST pass policies are discouraging
“I have needed to do test corrections for APES, but it’s really hard to get a pass,” Connor said. “I have the class on an odd day, so I have to go in and see him after class to get the pass to see him on an even day. Then we have an assembly or a Xello lesson, and they don’t really tell you [when]. I just never know what’s going to happen. Also, I used to see a friend every single day. As a team, we do our homework together, but now it’s hard because she doesn’t know that teacher; she can’t just go to the classroom. And, it’s harder for new clubs to start.”
James Johnson, 12
Student, teacher vacation equality
“We’ve been getting in trouble since we’ve been missing more school. Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of kids got detention for it,” Johnson said. “Mr. Dolezal said he has like 60 days off. It should be up to [the students on] how many days they have, [but] you should schedule it in advance, so you’re not skipping any tests or anything.”
Brielle Sankey, 11
Overlapping lunch periods
“The first week of school, when I finally got into fourth lunch, chairs were everywhere,” Sankey said. “There was food on the tables, on the floors — and there was no pizza. I was so mad because I don’t get anything else. I’m like, ‘Are you serious right now? Everything’s such a mess.’ [The overlapping passing period is] horrendous because I got to my lunch and thought I was late.”
Late start and four days a week
“We go to school five days a week from 7:35 in the morning to 2:45. I did some research on it, and our brains are not developing in the morning,” Sankey said. “We are not fully, cognitively awake to be processing numbers and math and AP classes with thousands of words. So, if we start later in the day and go later [with] four days a week, we’d have more time to do homework. Students would be more engaged; they’d be more willing to do their work.”
