With fewer dances to plan in the spring, BSM’s student council is focusing more on addressing student issues that have been raised about lapses in subjects, rules, and student involvement. They are focusing on new classes, an updated student handbook, and greater student involvement opportunities.

To ensure adequate attention is given to each of these areas, student council made the decision to split into sections that focus on each topic individually. “Right now we actually just made a big decision to split up student council into different sections. So we’re just going to have one topic. Like one group is tackling March Madness and another one’s doing prom. There’s one talking about the common basket and overall service. I’m in a group talking about course registration for next year and potentially implementing new courses at BSM,” Junior Class Treasurer Francesca Litchenberger, said.

New courses may include social justice classes, AP Psychology, home economics, and American Sign Language, which would replace the Chinese department that will be eliminated after the 2022-2023 school year. These classes would be added in the next two years and would be available first for the 2024 graduating class. “These decisions were mostly on those requests, especially with the social justice classes… We need more push for equity equality, and we need people to learn about racial inequality to better educate ourselves in the future,” Executive Board President Emani Labon, said.

Student council is also working on updating the student handbook to better address students’ needs. These changes would be implemented next year and include leaving campus privileges for juniors in addition to seniors and more opportunities to spend time outside for lunch and other activities. “They’re gonna push for juniors to also be able to leave school as upperclassmen. You should have the power to actually have more freedom because I feel like not too many juniors get the habit…They’re gonna be trying to incorporate eating outside and doing more outside. Getting fresh air, especially during the spring and fall because it’ll be very nice to have that,” Labon said.

They are also finding ways to incorporate the student body into decision making, so that everyone feels that their voice is being heard and valued. “It’s all based on the student body. We’re gonna do this new thing where we’re gonna add the student body to vote for things like send us classes that you guys want similar things that you want so we can incorporate student voices because the student body like voices matter and they really put an impact on changes. So it’ll be really good to hear what people think about classes. So it’s mostly student requests, and it’s about making change within the school,” Labon said.