The need for a student referendum on schedule

On April 8, Saratoga faculty and staff voted against a proposed full block schedule, likely defeating any such change for several years. The question is: Where was the student input? Why did we have no say in deciding a policy that directly affects us? Why were we, like plebs in an an aristocratic society, ignored?

Here’s a truth: In a school with just over 1,500 people, around 100 of those people make the decisions. Now, a school is no democracy, that’s for certain. I wouldn’t like to go to a school completely run by students (headline: “Students vote to abolish school altogether”). But to disregard student opinion altogether? That’s a bit careless, considering how greatly the policy would affect students. 

Student influence over the policy change was indirect at best. This year there was, of course, the informal “polling” conducted by some teachers. This polling, however, was often cursory — no one would call it a legitimate, accurate representation of student sentiment. 

The voters, who consisted of all school employees (from teachers to cafeteria ladies), used the School Site Council (SSC) survey from last year as the “student” opinion. However, the survey was flawed. Only around 600 students voted — less than half the school — and 53 percent of those students voted for last year’s full block schedule proposal. Not only was that survey irrelevant (this year’s proposal was markedly different), it also disregarded the majority of the student body’s opinions. 

This year, there’s another SSC survey, released after spring break, which will once again include a question on the full block. Of course, the school board will likely disregard any such decision “made” by the students on the survey. 

Teachers, after all, with their tenure and permanent residence at the school, are in the eyes of the School Board sacred cows whose wishes must be obeyed. We students, the very people the school is supposed to “serve,” are mere pawns — no, we don’t even have the honor of being pawns. We’re bystanders, spectators.

Now, the teachers and staff certainly had their reasons for doing what it did. Understandably, many teachers were sick of discussing the full block schedule — they had just voted about it last year, and the debate was causing tension among them. So the solution was to vote now. Buy the car without telling wife, marry the girl without telling mom and dad. 

But was it really too much to delay making a decision until the teachers knew how the students felt? Principal Paul Robinson told the faculty to vote based on how the policy would affect the students. A large part of that, I would assume, would be knowing what the students actually wanted.

Finally, this leads me to the solution. The SSC survey is not the right way to solicit the student voice. I worry that my fellow students will scroll past the survey on Facebook, or just “mark as read” on their email. Besides, since when has a vote on a major policy change been conducted through the Internet? 

What the students need, what the school needs, is a paper vote — a referendum of sorts. The paper vote gives us a legitimate voice, a way to tell the administration what we want. It gives us a say in matters that affect us. It’s really not hard to organize; after all, we vote several times a year on topics from Homecoming Queen to ASB President.

This vote doesn’t even need to mean anything politically (the student vote doesn’t need to be worth any percentage of the total vote), though that would be nice. For the Full Block decision, here’s how the whole decision making process should have gone, ideally:

1) Educate students about the decision — we would’ve had to learn about the ramifications of the schedule eventually, anyway.

2) Administer the student vote; collect results.

3) Administer the faculty vote; collect results, send faculty vote results to the School Board and advise X policy change. 

In this manner, faculty would have actually known what the students wanted. The students would have had a collective voice — powerful indeed in the minds of faculty members who weren’t sure how they wanted to vote. We would have actually had a say in our affairs. 

Saratoga High School is no absolute democracy, nor should it be. We have an outstanding administration that’s done an excellent job with the school — from providing the best teachers to giving us an abundance of class choices. If anything, the paper vote would be a tool for the administration to use, to receive the legitimate, accurate student opinion. 

Truly, it’s a bad idea to create a policy while disregarding the wish of the masses. It may be efficient, but it’s a recipe for bad government — and resentment.