Arizona students are helping shape their educational experience

Phoenix AZ

25 October, 2021

4:50 PM

Description

The third cohort of Arizona's Student Advisory Council is already getting to work, advocating for student needs such as mental health and equal access to advanced education programs at the state level. Kathy Hoffman, the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, created the council in 2019 asan outlet for students to share their experiences in the school system with the board ofeducation. 15 students ranging from fifth to twelfth grade participated in the council's first year,increasing to 20 students the following year. Students within the council have various opportunities to inform the board of their ideas forimprovements, including speaking at monthly board meetings. During the Sept. 27th meeting,Tej Desai, a junior at Paradise Valley High School, Lily Fox, a sophomore at McClintock HighSchool, and Jade Kuan, a senior at University High School, spoke on various issues they havenoticed within their school communities. Desai and Kuan said that schools need to update their teaching of cultural backgrounds andmental health, respectively. Desai noticed an increase in minority populations in the U.S. and alack of education about their cultures, while Kuan found that the mental health resourcesprovided in schools do not meet the needs of students coming out of the pandemic.Desai suggested an expansion of the current music and arts programs to include instruction onethnic music and art, as he found that elementary-age children engaged most positively withthis medium. "It was evident that these students had never truly been exposed to something like this before, Isaw their hands shoot up with questions … This truly emphasizes the urgency and importanceof cultural awareness," he said. Kuan brought forth various ideas to increase mental health awareness and provide resources inschools, like holding assemblies aimed at raising awareness, hiring more mental healthprofessionals and updating the health curriculum to include information about mental health.Kuan emphasized that in-school access to these resources is important in order to eliminate thestigma surrounding mental health and to help underserved students who might not otherwisereceive mental health support. Fox said testing for the gifted education program in Arizona should be reformed to diversify thegifted population in schools. She said that her middle school consisted of about 80% students ofcolor, but the gifted program did not reflect this. "About 95 of the gifted students were white and middle class, only about a third of us werewomen, and I was one of three girls in my engineering class of 25," Fox said.She cited inconsistencies in identifying behavior that may indicate a student is eligible for thegifted program as the problem. In order to remedy these inconsistencies, Fox proposed that thestate adopt "universal gifted testing," so that all students have a chance to test into the program,rather than only those selected by teachers and administrators. In addition to the Student Advisory Council, Hoffman runs four other advisory councils that focuson issues within specific communities. The Latinx, African American and Indian EducationAdvisory Councils focus on the needs of their respective communities, while the Equitable andInclusive Practices Advisory Council covers a wide variety of backgrounds across Arizona.The Latinx and African American Advisory Councils began accepting student council membersin 2019 — one high school student and one college student apiece. Prior to this, the existingcouncils were exclusively made up of educators, Department of Education staff and Arizonacommunity members. "Students provide a unique perspective about how policies impact the day-to-day life of studentson the ground in our schools," the Department of Education said in a statement. One examplethey provided is of students on the Latinx Advisory Council, who might provide the perspectiveof being undocumented or having a mixed-status family in Arizona. The councils do not have many established goals and agendas yet, as they reconvened for thisacademic year very recently, however, one of the goals of the Student Advisory Council is tohold the first AZ Student Summit, "a town hall type forum for Arizona students to propose ideason how to better Arizona schools," according to a statement from the Department of Education.