Student Advisory Board begins work for 2019-2020 school year

WASILLA — With many fresh faces, the Mat-Su Borough School District Student Advisory Board began working toward improving student experience across the district.

SAB is an organization mixed of middle and high school student representatives who want to voice their concerns or ideas about how to enhance the school experience, whether it be voicing a possible change to the curriculum or running a community service event. This unified body acts as a clear way to communicate students’ wants and needs to the school district office.

Jillian Morrissey, the first-year advisor for SAB, got a taste of this organization at work last year when she helped SAB’s Public Outreach Committee. Morrissey has 18 years of experience working with youth across the state through AmeriCorps. She worked with the Alaska branch of this non-profit and taught teenagers, “real practical stuff like how to work around chainsaws, how to sharpen hand tools [and] how to lug heavy loads of things.”

“Working with high school students, I love it,” said Morrissey.

Four years ago, Morrissey began working as the Public Information Officer at the MSBSD. When the Superintendent, Dr. Monica Goyette, offered her the SAB advisor position, Morrissey jumped at the opportunity. Students now have a solid connection at the district office, which makes their ideas easier to hear.

“I just miss having direct contact with students to be able to work on interesting things and do cool projects,” said Morrissey.

For some, this school year marks a beginning. But for one of SAB’s most seasoned members, this marks the end of a six-year journey. Tobin Hushower began serving SAB as a representative for Palmer Junior Middle School. Without skipping a beat, he has stuck with this organization all the way to this year at Palmer High School.

“It’s weird being a senior and realizing that it’s going to be my last year doing this,” Hushower said.

Hushower’s greatest accomplishments as a member of SAB are working on the water week project and working on distance learning.

“It’s meant to help students who go to schools who don’t have programs that they would like to take, like advanced classes. Say a student at Redington wants to take an (advanced placement) class, they would join a video call for a class,” Hushower said.

The main benefit of video calls in a classroom is that it gives the student an almost complete classroom experience, Hushower said.

SAB looks to accomplish more this year. The out-of-school committee got its feet wet in ideas about projects to do this school year. One topic discussed was how SAB could get involved with programs that help feed students over the weekend and holidays. Most notably recognized as a ‘backpack program,’ it creates healthy meals for students to take home over the weekend and vacations. Many organizations like Action for Healthy Kids and Feeding America run similar programs nation-wide to help students who have free or reduced lunches or those who are in-need.

To learn more about how to join SAB, contact the advisor Jillian Morrissey at jillian.morrissey@matsuk12.us.

Anthony Jones is a senior at Mat-Su Career and Technical High School and a Frontiersman intern for the 2019-2020 school year.