Cape Girardeau students take the lead in shaping school climate with new council

To provide “a direct line of communication between students across the district and then district leadership team members”, Cape Girardeau Public Schools recently created the Student Youth Council Committee, allowing student participants to help make decisions to “improve the culture and climate” at their respective schools.

The district held a kickoff luncheon Sept. 24 for its first meeting, which allowed CGPS administration to speak with the students selected for the committee and their parents about the council’s purpose. The committee consists of 34 students from third through 12th grade.

“With it being brand new, it was to acclimate all of the people that are going to be participating, but also update the parents and guardians on what our goals were for the students as we moved throughout the school year,” said Brice Beck, deputy superintendent of K-12 education.

“It was a great event. I thought it was very well attended. We filled up just about the entire boardroom.”

Of the 34 students on the committee, the district selected five third and five fourth graders to represent each of CGPS’s five elementary schools, three fifth and four sixth graders to represent Cape Central Middle School, two seventh and four eighth graders to represent Terry W. Kitchen Jr. High and 11 students from across Cape Central High School, Central Academy and the Career and Technology Center.

Beck said there wasn’t a specific criterion for the selection process, and he allowed principals from each school to choose who to nominate.

Students on the council include third graders Aliana Boyd, Aaliyah Davis, Holly Harrison, Kynlee Bird and Keaton Carver; fourth graders Nathan Young, Caelin Sharop, Stephen Porter, Addysyn Hollins and Janelle Hopkins; fifth graders Jeremiah June, Levi Gillman and Merci Cox; sixth graders Gracie Pippins, Claire Boyer, Joshua Kirby and Kolby Schoolcraft; seventh graders Liam McGill and Hiba Ahmad; eighth graders Atreyu Hartline, Zaylen Jones, Alex Johnson and McKinley Streling; and high school students Delaney Dougherty, Cameron Watson, Goliath Morris-Young, Sankriti Sriaknt, Reagan (Gigi) Borders, Jayla Anderson, Corbin Matysik, D’Angelo Wiggins, Ivy Baldwin, Jalyrics Bohnert and D’Yante Idom.

During the kickoff meeting, Beck and superintendent Howard Benyon gave remarks regarding student participation within the committee and discussed “some of the finer details” on which grade levels would meet together, topics to discuss and when meetings would occur.

“We provided the students with guiding questions to take back to their respective buildings for conversations with the remainder of the student body,” Beck said.

Beck said he and Benyon came up with the idea of forming the committee after hearing a “couple of superintendents bring up this type of model in their district” at the National Superintendents Forum during the 2023-24 school year.

“I heard a superintendent from one of the larger schools in Texas talking about how they modeled their student committee,” Beck said. “I had time to pick his brain a little bit and ask questions after the session was over. We came back and discussed it as a cabinet team, and we didn't see any downside whatsoever to forming this.”

Because the students are in the various CGPS buildings daily, Beck said the committee will benefit the school district because “they know exactly what’s going on.”

“They know how other students feel because they're having those conversations and interactions with them all the time,” Beck said. “I think, from a cabinet perspective, for us, it's a learning opportunity. We're going to be able to give feedback in real time every month from our kids from all the buildings across the district. Obviously, they're going to know things are going on, or they're going to have topics that they think need to be addressed, that if we never had those conversations that wouldn't be taking place.”

The council will be split into two groups, grades three through five and grades six through 12, and will meet once a month at minimum. Beck said the students involved were enthusiastic during the kickoff luncheon.

“They came in with a lot of topics on hand already that they wanted to start talking about,” Beck said. “I think the biggest part for some of them is that we leaned on our principals to do this. But you need that leadership capacity and growth at the student level to be continuous as they cycle through our middle school, our junior high and our high school. By expanding that leadership capacity while they're in elementary school, they're going to be progressing and possibly be with us for another six years in our school hallways. That's going to be great.”