Students prioritize bathrooms, cross-campus passes; public commenters press mental-health and SRO clarity

Student representatives Bronwyn Downey and Alexis Chen presented a student-voice update and preliminary results from a lunch census and pulse forms, and public comments at the meeting focused on mental-health supports and the proposed school security policy.

The student reps said their lunch-census and pulse-form work found bathrooms as the most frequently raised issue: "By far, the most frequently brought-up issue is bathrooms," they said, adding cross-campus passes and lunch pricing as other consistent concerns. They described initiatives to close feedback gaps: admin lunches with student groups, a lunch census to sample many students in short conversations, iterative pulse forms and brief morning announcements to share board actions with students.

Public commenters followed with related remarks. Scott Cohen praised the district's rapid interim appointment of a social worker and urged the board to heed administrators' requests for supports; other commenters noted that state-funded wraparound services exist but asked whether those external resources are equivalent to in-house staff in a crisis. "When we're talking about crisis situations in the school ... we need people here to support the students," one commenter said, urging a conversation about whether the district intends in-house support or to rely on outside agencies.

A public commenter who reviewed a first-read school-security policy suggested adding a "change management process" so students would not be alarmed by armed officers on campus and urged clearer definitions of how many SROs or Class III officers would be placed across the large campus. The board clarified they contract with a township police department for one SRO and three Class III officers, have five district security staff (four officers and one coordinator) and noted a policy for armed security/coordination is being added to the manual.

What happens next: Student reps will continue pulse surveys and lunch census work and bring summaries to administrative lunches; the board will continue policy review of the school-security program and consider additional discussion in committee about mental-health strategy and job-description updates for the new social worker.