Student Government Project: How has LaGuardia's SGO improved student involvement and representation this year?

Posted by Seth Pearce at 5:27 PM

When I became president of LaGuardia's student government this year, the first question I felt needed addressing was: Who gets to be on Student Government?

Since I joined SGO in sophomore year, students had been appointed to be representatives by putting in an application consisting of an essay, a recommendation, and their transcript. In most schools, this is an effective way of selecting representatives because there will not always be enough applicants to represent every grade, official class, etc. When I joined, there were about 25 SGO members and I was the only one from my grade. An application process for lower-level officials increases the number of students involved in their school.

However, there were also several requirements for aspiring SGO representatives that I disagreed with. First, applicants had to have a grade point average requirement of 85 or above to be considered. In addition, they had to have a clean dean's record.

My problem with both of these requirements is that they exclude important members of the student community: those who have not succeeded academically and students who have not followed school rules. These students have just as much right to representation as any others. They are also affected by the school's successes and more so by its failures.

For that reason, my fellow officers and I decided to repeal those requirements and since then, the number of SGO representatives has jumped from 46 to over 100, with greater representation of students from every class, major, race and gender.

As we increased in size, we also created a Speaker position. This person would run personnel of SGO and would work on recruiting new representatives, accepting and rejecting applications and helping new members find the committee that they would be best for.

We also created a new Student Opinion Committee: a committee of 15 SGO representatives whose sole job is to research how students feel about the goings-on of our school and then report their findings to the officers so that we could bring them to the school committees that we sit on: Attendance, Safety, and the SLT.

Student Government Project: LaGuardia High School

Posted by Seth Pearce at 8:26 AM

For the NYC Student Union Student Government Project, the members of the union are profiling their own schools' student government organizations. This is my entry on LaGuardia's SGO.

At LaGuardia, our SGO is run by five elected officers and one hundred representatives appointed by application that meet every week.

The officers are the president (me), vice president, secretary, treasurer and, as of this year, a speaker. The first four positions are elected by the entire student body and the last, though appointed this year, will in the future be elected by returning SGO representatives.

The president and vice president both sit on the School Leadership Team and one of them (we switch off) sits on the Safety, Attendance, and C-30 (administration hiring) committees so as to actively advocate for our peers. The Secretary and Treasurer also appear at SLT meetings, though they do not vote.

In addition, the officers each serve as liaisons for the SGO's nine committees, where the main work of the SGO is done. Each representative serves on one of the committees. This year's committees are:

Academic: Dealing with academic issues that arise and advocating on behalf of students to the Academic APs.
Building Beautification: Working on improving the school environment by making it more appealing and sustainable.
College: Working with the College Office to improve LaGuardia's college process.
Communications: Getting information out to the students by writing a section in the school's weekly bulletin.
SNAP: The LaGuardia Student Performance Society, which produces student-generated art and performance (e.g. Poetry Slams, Hootenanies and the like).
Student Activities: Helping student organizations get funding and space and assisting them in the logistics of event planning.
Student Court: Students may appeal demerits or punishments before a court of their peers. (I'll go more into detail in a few weeks)
Student Opinion: Actively seeking out student opinion on LaGuardia's goings-on through polls and social networking sites.
Website: Runs the SGO website and works to improve the SGO's internet presence.

Next post: How has LaGuardia's SGO worked to improve student involvement and representation this year?

Cross-posted on NYC Students Blog

Student Action: The NYCSU Student Government Project

Posted by Seth Pearce at 10:44 PM

This is the first in a series of posts on the importance of student government organizations in New York City's high schools. I will also discuss the LaGuardia High School Student Government, for I which I serve, and its actions as a model for other SGOs. Enjoy! -Seth

Effective SGOs are extremely important in the fight for students’ rights and more student involvement in NYC schools. Additionally SGOs provide students with an outlet to express their opinions about their schools. By communicating student opinions to administration and faculty and planning events or creating programs for their fellow students they can play a big role in increasing student enthusiasm for their schools and improving the school as a whole.

That is why, this year, the New York City Student Union will be researching the state of student governments in schools around the city and helping develop SGOs or other student advocacy organizations in schools that don’t have them already. They will also be inviting more students actively involved in their schools to join the union.

This project has three stages: research, development and preservation. First, NYCSU will be collecting info on SGOs around the city by talking to SGO reps within these schools and collecting surveys from them. These surveys will include info about the basic everyday functioning of the SGO, the role it plays in the school, and subjective questions about the responder’s opinions on student governments in general. From the surveys, we will also collect contact information to create a citywide Student Government Network.

Once we have received a significant and representative collection of surveys we will begin to create a loose “SGO Model.” This would serve as an instruction packet on how to run an ideal SGO. We will also be on call to work with students at various schools, especially those who are part of the network, to improve their SGOs and work with them to improve their schools by connecting them with other SGOs around the city.

The final stage of the project is preservation. Each year we must update the network with new student names etc. and keep working on development when needed.

If you are an SGO representative in your school or are friends/parents of one please let him or her know about this and ask him or her to contact union@nycstudents.org or seth@nycstudents.org with the subject line: "Student Government Project"