The student voice committee was designed after the walkouts for student voices to be heard among admin and fellow students, in order to improve the school.  All students are welcome to attend and can speak about disagreements on the topic on that has been brought up. Speaking up is all kept within a safe environment where a disagreement is not targeted in a bad way. 

      Fellow student and senior, Shadaly Naranjo, often shows up to the voice committee to discuss ways to make the school better. Shadaly Naranjo described a topic that was brought up multiple times during the student voice committee,  “a topic we tend to see get brought up many times is definitely about admin, how cadets want them to start being more involved in the MLA community. Another topic that gets brought up a lot is wanting more community days or just fun activities throughout the school year, as well as the uniform and grooming and how some cadets aren’t in agreement with it and others, want it to be enforced more.” While others may agree or disagree with this statement, MLA students made these suggestions for admin to take accountability and work to better our school and fellow peers. 

     Another topic that the student voice committee touched base on was the amount of people who tend to show up. Shadaly Naranjo noted“ our first meeting there was a fair amount of students who showed up, all were seniors, however. They tend to be the same students every time because they are usually already in there for lunch every day. The student voice committee is a safe environment where opinions are taken into account and often listened to so the school could become a better environment where students are motivated to come.”

     Throughout the school year, the MLA community has faced multiple hard phases where students’ voices may have not been heard. Shadaly Naranjo also realized what was going on and believes student voices weren’t being heard because “ there were many things that our school was dragged into without it being the student’s fault. Those issues unfortunately did overshadow student voices and so I feel like that was probably the lowest time when we weren’t being heard. I do believe that now it’s made clear that we want to be heard and we’ll find a way to be heard, and so I think there’s been a better job with student voices being taken into consideration.” Shadaly is not alone in noticing a difference.  Multiple students have now claimed that their voices are being heard and taken into account students now have the courage to speak up about disagreements that are going on within our school community.