The SSC bulletin is a weekly article covering the events at each Monday’s council meeting.
The Student Staff Council (SSC) weekly meeting began at 3:31 p.m. on Monday, April 14. Assistant Principal for School Life Quinn Killy supplied the day’s snacks: a variety of Frito-Lay chips and an assortment of Oreo cookies.
This week, the council discussed ways to hear more student feedback, went over plans for representative elections and sorted lost-and-found items.
The council said the suggestions students write in Google Forms feedback surveys are typically vague, and individual representatives said their grade-wide office hours are often unproductive or lacking in student attendance. To remedy these issues, representatives discussed sending out Google Forms more frequently or potentially leaving a feedback form permanently up on the MyGDS resources page, so students could access the form at any time. Representatives also debated scheduling blocks for SSC office hours into next year’s schedule, which would replace Monday community time periods with office hours.
SSC then discussed the possibility of holding town hall meetings once a month, which would also take place during Monday community time. Killy said SSC held town hall meetings in the past, but the meetings stopped in recent years. For these meetings, the school would split students by grade or by upper and underclassmen, and students could speak in front of the grade(s) to ask questions and share suggestions. SSC representatives would facilitate the conversation and answer questions during the meeting.
The council debated the merits of both town hall meetings and office hours. Representatives agreed that office hours are more personal and conversational, making them preferable for students who don’t want to speak in front of their entire grade, whereas town hall meetings provide a space for students to build on one another’s ideas.
Representatives decided the best method of hearing feedback would be to hold both office hours and town hall meetings on an alternating biweekly schedule. These scheduled meetings are currently just up for consideration, but if the council decides to implement this change, the meetings would begin at the start of the 2025-2026 school year.
Next, the council went over the processes for SSC elections, which will take place on Thursday, May 1, during class meetings. All current freshmen, sophomores and juniors can run to be an SSC representative for the coming school year. For the first time in recent years, candidates can create their own posters to hang up around the school for their campaigns.
Prior to Monday’s meeting, SSC President Natalia Freedman reached out to Director of Facilities Khalid Daniels about purchasing feminine care products for the women’s and gender-neutral bathrooms. Daniels responded to say he would buy pads and tampons in bulk and replace them weekly. While the council originally planned to buy products from the company Rif Care, as sophomore representative Willa Wible previously partnered with them for her 2023 Hopper Tank project, they are unsure which company will provide the products in the future. The supplier is now up to Daniels’ discretion.
The council then went over their goals for the coming school year. Representatives want to improve grade-wide events, which they noted were typically rushed and not well planned. Freshman representative Ella Maas suggested the council meet at the beginning of or before the start of the school year to plan all grade-wide events for the year, so these events could be prepared in depth.
Since the school year is ending soon and lost-and-found items need to be collected, the council went to the lost-and-found bins on the first floor and began to sort the clothing items onto different tables in the Internet Cafe. Representatives brought all sports equipment to the gym and emailed students whose lost clothing items had name tags to tell them to collect their lost items.
As the council spent the latter half of the meeting sorting lost-and-found items, they did not meet in grade-specific groups or in their four student life subcommittees. Several representatives left the meeting early to go to athletic practices, and the meeting came to an end at 4:27 p.m. Killy gathered the remaining Oreo cookies and Lays chips as representatives left the meeting.