Ketura Lainy is a senior at Bloomington High School South and member of the Community Leadership Building group. (Courtesy photo)
Lucia Walker, a senior at Bloomington High School South, believes it’s important to leave things better than you found them.
Walker is a member of Community Leadership Building, a youth-led action group at South that’s aiming to do just that.
About a month ago, a survey about school climate and curriculum was sent out to all 1,678 of South’s students, which will eventually lead to an action plan based on the data to accomplish the Community Leadership Building group’s goal of making the school more inclusive and equitable.
During the virtual fifth annual Monroe County Childhood Conditions Summit in October, students in the Community Leadership Building group shared experiences and themes they found within their school, like marginalization and Euro-centrism in history education and racist jokes. To make things better, the group wanted to first collect data, which led to the creation of the survey that was recently sent out.
To make that happen, students worked with their faculty sponsor Kirstin Milks and Kate Ratliff, the assistant principal at South in charge of student organizations, along with other administrators and teachers. Getting to the final version of the survey was a collective effort, Ratliff said. It’s been impressive how intentional students have been about the survey and wanting usable data, she said.
© 2024 HeraldTimesOnline, Bloomington, IN