Senate Holds Last Town Hall Meeting of the Year
By Winson Ye
The South Senate hosted its end of the year press conference on April 30, in which President Jack Lovett outlined the Senate’s goals for the future as well as its notable achievements over the past year.
Key goals that the Senate is working to achieve include:
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An extension of the library hours, so that students who get easily distracted at home, or students who play sports and participate in extracurricular activities can access the library after school from 3:30 to 5 PM on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. The Senate is still looking to hire a supervisor who is willing to supervise the students staying after in the library.
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Setting up seminars to teach students how to effectively deal with stress, such as basic time management and study skills. Overall, this is intended to make South’s environment less stressful and more conducive to improving the mental health of all the students.
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The Senate hopes to improve grade transparency in the pursuit of alleviating uncertainty and miscommunication for students when it comes to seeing their grades. All teachers are required to hand out a syllabus at the beginning of the year that will specify what exactly is factored into one’s grade. The senate worked with the Faculty Council and was able to create a policy surrounding the transparency of grades. The main concern from teachers regarding this policy was whether increasing transparency would actually create stress. The senate has made several compromises with teachers by making other options to provide grade transparency available to teachers besides Engrade. These compromises include self-calculators and student-teacher conferences during J-Block, at which students can receive their overalls grade at that point in the term.
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A re-evaluation of the amount of homework that is being provided to students to see how suitable it is. A fundamental part of this assessment is to see whether homework is taking too long because students are affected by distractions at home such as social media, or if it is actually the quantity of homework itself that is responsible for how long students spend on it.
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Reforming the Wellness curriculum so that an “Introduction to Stress Management” unit are part of the Sophomore Wellness curriculum. The curriculum would take material from the “Centered-Self” course currently available to upperclassmen. This new component of the Sophomore curriculum is intended to expose students to stress management courses in their early years of high school and possibly spark an inteterest to take the “Centered-Self” course as an upperclassmen.
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Taking a definitive stance and issuing a statement against Americans for Peace and Tolerance’s claims of the existence of anti-Semitism and pro-Islamic beliefs in the material that is being presented in the history curricula used by the Newton Public Schools. Lovett is concerned about how these accusations will now prevent teachers from presenting some academic material to their students in fear of getting sued or criticized. “Americans for Peace and Tolerance is actually restricting South’s academic ability, and the integrity of academic education and how students have a right to know these facts,” he said; however, due to the mixed opinions of South Senators regarding the language of the bill, senate decided to defer a vote.
Accomplishments that the Senate has made:
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Donating $370 to the Global Education Leadership Fund, a program in which students from both Newton high schools who are in good academic standing can be given the opportunity to take part in an educational international program despite financial difficulties.
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Installing vending machines in Cutler Commons, which students will hopefully take advantage of, so that enough funds can be accumulated in order to improve the area, such as buying new furniture. Lovett hopes that as a result, Cutler Commons will be a very fun environment in which students can just sit back and relax. “Our goal is to try to create an exciting place to hang out after J Block, so hopefully Cutler Commons will be the best place to do that,” Lovett said.
