The IHS student representatives to the Board of Education (BOE) attended their first official meeting on September 11. They spoke about the impact of recent budget cuts on student life, arguing that a lack of clear district communication has helped to create the current financial distress. The proposed budget was rejected by Ithaca voters in May. In order to prevent a contingency budget (which would have resulted in extreme cutbacks in spending on clubs, etc….), the BOE reduced the budget significantly, and the second version passed the public vote in June.
However, despite avoiding a disastrous contingency plan, the current budget has resulted in large class sizes, staff layoffs, and the elimination of programs like Latin and AVID. The student representatives claimed that combined language classes of regents, honors, and AP students are detrimental to the academic performance of all three groups. Most regents students have now dropped out of advanced Spanish because they are unable to keep pace with AP students who have much more background knowledge. On Monday, September 23, the student representatives met with acting principal Martha Hardesty for the first time, posing questions about the Arts Quad construction. Construction of temporary tech classrooms in the Arts Quad was initially set to be completed by August or September. However, various delays have led to an extending of the deadline, and the classrooms are unlikely to be finished even in the next several months.
The student representatives also asked Hardesty if it would be possible to have one graduation ceremony instead of two. She explained that in years past, parents and students had asked for graduation to be separated into two ceremonies so that each student could have more time onstage. Additionally, renting out an Ithaca College stadium (necessary for a combined graduation) costs roughly twice as much as running the event on the IHS football field. Friends can sign up for graduation together and, as of last year, students can sit next to whoever they want during the ceremony. The student representatives recently sent out a survey to determine student opinion on the current graduation ceremony.
Lastly, the student representatives are working to expand last year’s recycling pilot program. They are in communication with Assistant Superintendent for Operations Dr. Daniel Breiman and are looking to pursue new strategies to increase recycling at IHS. For example, they hope to explore the possibility of paper-only recycling bins, which could prevent food residue on drink cans and containers from contaminating other recyclable materials.
As always, any thoughts or concerns about ongoing or potential projects can be sent to the student representatives at their respective emails, which are listed below.
Claire Park ’25: cp14@icsd.k12.ny.us
Jingying Xu ’27: jx1@icsd.k12.ny.us
Georgina Malikopoulou ’25: gm1@icsd.k12.ny.us
Caedmon Sethupathy ’25: cs11@icsd.k12.ny.us