Students and staff elected junior Grace Khuzami as the Student Staff Council (SSC) president for the 2025-2026 school year. Khuzami, who served as SSC vice president for the 2024-2025 school year, will succeed graduating senior Natalia Freedman as president.
During Friday’s all–high school assembly, junior representatives and SSC presidential candidates Khuzami, John Morsberger and Sarah Sakr gave campaign speeches. After students and faculty voted via a Google Form on Friday night, Assistant Principal for School Life Quinn Killy emailed the high school to announce that Khuzami won. Her term will begin on Monday, May 19.
For the first time since 2023, more than one candidate ran for SSC president. Last year, Freedman ran unopposed. This year, candidates picked paper slips out of a bowl to determine the order in which they gave their speeches and responded to subsequent questions from the student body. Killy told students that questions could not be specific to any one candidate, so each candidate could respond to each question.
In her speech, Khuzami said she wanted to focus on increasing communication between the administration and the student body. She said she has “been in communication with board members about increasing student input and attending board meetings next year.” In 2022, the Board of Trustees rejected an SSC effort to add a student representative to the Board on the grounds of confidentiality.
Khuzami said she wanted to give students more of a say in future adaptations of the phone ban, which went into effect at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year and bans student phone use during the school day. “When the phone policy was implemented, many of us felt our perspective wasn’t considered,” she said. “That’s not how decisions at GDS should work.”
Morsberger said he would increase SSC’s impact on school life by holding more school-wide events. “My biggest priority would be improving SSC’s visibility and presence,” he said. “We’re responsible for a lot of quality-of-life changes.”
Sakr said her focus would be to provide more opportunities for stress relief and student bonding. “Fostering a community that prioritizes collaboration over competition is one of the most important focuses that I would have,” she said. Two of her ideas to create a more collaborative school environment were to organize SSC-run study sessions and to hold outdoor movie nights.
Staff collaboration with SSC is important to Khuzami. “We need deans back regularly in our SSC meetings,” she said in her speech. According to SSC secretary Alicia Kim, grade deans have attended less than half of SSC’s 12 meetings in 2025. Khuzami said communication with the deans is a way to build connection between the student body and the administration. “When decisions affect us, we need a seat at the table,” she said.
Khuzami said she wanted to lower the effect of final exams on students’ grades from 20 to 15 percent. She also wants to create a spring formal for underclassmen since they are not invited to prom. She also plans to start grade-versus-grade supply drives. She said the proposed drives would create “a bit of friendly competition while also helping those in need.”
Freshman Eila Priestap said she wanted the next SSC president to “make meaningful changes.” She said Khuzami’s emphasis on student communication with the administration and the Board was notable. “It would definitely be super important to have more student input in big decisions,” Priestap said.
Tenth-grade dean Greg Dallinger said SSC would be most productive if they furthered their communication with the faculty. “Outcomes are always better when processes are collaborative,” he said. “I think that’s one of the things that is really great about this school.”
Junior Simon Kessler said he hoped the 2025-2026 council would have a greater role in student life. “If they’re more impactful on our everyday lives rather than just on one-off events, that would be pretty cool,” he said.
Morsberger and Sakr are still eligible to run for vice president, treasurer or secretary. The council will internally select those cabinet members at the SSC meeting on Monday, May 19.