Student Think Tank promotes equity, diversity and inclusion

A relatively new student committee is aiming to improve equity, diversity and inclusion in schools by raising awareness about existing policies and how students can better access them.
The committee is an initiative of this year’s student trustees. Fisher Monahan, a Grade 11 student at Stayner Collegiate Institute, is one of the co-chairs, along with Cassandra McMahon from Bear Creek Secondary School and Zainab Jafri from Eastview Secondary School.
The role of student trustees is to bring student perspectives to school board discussions, develop as student leaders, increase the Simcoe County District School Board’s awareness of issues of concern to students, assist trustees in determining student issues, gather student opinion and help to foster effective communication between the board and students.
The idea for the sub-committee was initially pitched by Jafri at the beginning of this school year. Monahan said schools put out a call for committee members from secondary schools, and the student senate and ended up with a committee of 10 like-minded yet diverse individuals who are forward thinkers to jump start the initiative.
Recently, the committee was formally renamed the SCDSB Student Think Tank to reflect the focus on policy and research.
“We started with the goal in mind of researching certain policies within the school board that are equitable, diverse and inclusive,” said Monahan.
For example, every school is supposed to have a designated prayer space and gender neutral washrooms.
“But not every students knows about those certain policies so with our sub-committee, we wanted to bring together a group of students who would help us advocate those policies to the general student body,” he said.
Monahan said the committee hopes to increase awareness through various forms of outreach, including social media channels that are launching soon.
It is also working on a survey, jointly with the school board, to gauge how students are feeling about learning-at-home. The Student Think Tank will be including questions relating to equity, diversity and inclusion on the survey, which will be going out to all secondary school students in the board.
Student trustee elections for the next school year are taking place later this month. For more information, visit www.scdsb.on.ca.