There are many ways for students to get involved with MVHS. Students help with rally preparations and fundraise for the school; students keep up with school events and happenings; and students raise MVHS’s ever-climbing rankings. There’s so much we do for MVHS in all these areas. But what can we do to be part of the decision-making process at MVHS?
It’s important that students’ voices are heard during MVHS’s decision-making process, especially when we commit so much of our time towards the school. In a sense, it’s like taxation without representation; we’re putting hours towards a school that isn’t representing our ideas as a student body.
But we also brought this upon ourselves. Each year, in our start-of-school information, we get a sign-up sheet for the PTSA. Few sign up. Fewer know about a similar organization called School Site Council, let alone sign up for it. For a school that has expressed concern about the lack of transparency in decision-making processes, it’s a source of concern that we barely know about an organization that, according the the MVHS website, “makes decisions regarding the school budget, staff development and school goals.” That sounds kind of important. Maybe just a little.
Our student body is a great metaphor for the nation. At the moment, the political structure is less like a nation and more like an oligarchy of the few people that vote. In the 18-29-year-old age range, according to the Roper Center, only 18% voted. That number is abysmally low. And yet, it still determined the outcome of the election. Even when that sample size is not representative of the people as a whole, it is making all the decisions.
The same is true of our school. All the decisions are being made by the few people who bother to join organizations like the PTSA and School Site Council. We could do so much better than this. We could be a school that reflects the opinions, needs and interests of its diverse student body. As it is, we are a poor excuse for a democracy.
It is not simply enough for students to have opinions about these things, though. To have any real impact and to cause any change, students have to air their grievances to the right audience. The PTSA and School Site Council are bodies of influence; Tumblr is not. Not, that is, unless we do something outside of Tumblr to actively make our opinions heard. While it may be too late to join these organizations during this school year, we should take stock of these organizations and communicate our ideas to students who are already in them so it is truly a representative democracy. And at a school filled with so many intelligent students, there’s bound to be great ideas everywhere. All we need to do is translate them from Tumblr and back up our words with action.
