Hey NYC Student Union!

It was so fantastic to meet all of you guys on Monday, and I thought our meeting went quite successfully. We came up with so many great ideas as a group, I’m really excited to see what we do this year.

To sum up the meeting:

We discussed the goals of the union and our mission, which is:

To act as a powerful, collective voice for New York City students that can defend the rights we are so often deprived of due to lack of organization.

To give students a voice in the decisions made about our own education and to allow students to work cooperatively with school officials, department of education officials, and public officials to find solutions to the problems that plague the lives of city youth.

To provide communication between students from all ends of the city, and to ensure that students are able to make the most of the broad array of educational and social opportunities we are offered.

and then we spent most of the meeting talking about different issues we face at school and in the education system, including:

-Curricula should be less fixed and more adaptable to the needs of a school’s specific students. Students should be involved in deciding on their curriculum. Students should be able to take classes they genuinely want to take. Schools should offer AP, honors, and other advanced courses.

-Students should be informed and equipped for the admissions processes of high schools. Admissions should consider that not all students have had the same opportunities.

-Students need to organize together to work on a variety of issues local, national, international, etc.

-Public schools simply need more funding, and better distribution of funds.

-Low diversity, especially in specialized schools.

-Students should have a voice in how their school functions.

-Students should be provided with tutoring opportunities.

-All schools should have well-functioning, representative student governments.

-There is way too much standardized testing.

-Schools do not recycle and are generally not environmentally concerned, even if the students and faculty are.

-Class size is out of control.

-Teachers are not well-trained, are not held to high enough standards, are not rewarded for good work and do not face consequences for incompetence, are restricted to the curriculum, and lots of other teacher-related issues.

-Transferring schools should be simpler.

-Security and school violence needs to be dealt with in reasonable, long-term ways that does not hold students to the standards of criminals.

-Guidance counselors needs to be more available.

-Health and sex education need to be improved.

-Graduation rates are alarmingly low, and little is done to help schools with low graduation rates.

-School buildings are just unclean.

-Schools are being relocated even though students are strongly opposed.

-The Department of Education has almost no connection to students whatsoever.

But the one major issue that kept coming up was apathy and lack of information. We felt that our peers didn’t know about all the problems of the education system, and either didn’t care or didn’t think they could do anything. We also felt like so much emphasis was being placed on grades and testing that students don’t value education anymore.

Altogether, we had 32 students present, representing 14 schools. We have chapters established in Bard HSEC, Staten Island Tech, HS of Economics and Finance, Urban Academy, Eleanor Roosevelt HS, Brandeis HS, LaGuardia HS, Brooklyn Tech, and Murrow HS. We are off to a very good start!

Our next meeting will be on Monday, October 16th. We will be in the same building, but watch the website and check for emails for room changes. We’re going to need a bigger table! This meeting will be an action meeting, so come with an idea in your head of which of the above issues is most important, and also something we can tackle. If you are really passionate about something, come in with some research and an argument! And no matter how you feel, let’s get prepared to get to work!