During the last few weeks, flyers have gone up around Community High School. With messages regarding Forum and voting, the flyers promote the upcoming Forum Council election, where students will vote on next year’s FoCo presidents and vice president.
This year, FoCo leadership — consisting of teacher-advisor Ryan Silvester, co-presidents Zoe Simmons and Matthew Castilho — along with CHS administration, decided on the new system. With elections in February, months before the end of school, the elected co-presidents could sit in on meetings and learn how to manage the position.
“[Elected presidents would] kind of get a feel for [leading] before they're just thrown in the deep end,” Simmons said. “They would be able to hit the ground running in the fall.”
With voting on Feb. 23, between 11:30 and 2:30, here are the candidates for the 23-24 FoCo president and vice president.
Co-Presidents: Morgan McClease and Izzie Jacob
Jacob:“As FoCo presidents, we hope to achieve a more thoroughly planned out middle school outreach program. That's one of our biggest priorities because we want to create a community that is more diverse and more equitable across the school district and the county. We hope to [bring back] the spirit of Forum to Community… and we'll do that by creating more spirit weeks and plan a dance if we have the support of the administration."
Co-Presidents: Jonah Klein and Amy Boeving
Boeving:“One of our initiatives [would be] to survey middle school applicants and see what their background is in order to get an idea of where we should promote to get a more diverse student demographic. We want to bring back events like the fall dance and revitalize Multi-Culti to encourage diversity and education on different cultures. There [currently] isn't a lot of communication between Forum Council and the student body. I think something I'd like to focus on next year is increasing communication between council and the student body.”
Klein:“We want to bring Community back to what seniors and other [graduates] said it used to be. I always heard my [graduate] brother talking about all of these events and different things going on. Now that COVID happened and we're back, it seems like a lot of those events aren’t happening anymore, and I would definitely like to make Community feel like it used then.”
Vice President: Addi Hinesman
“My biggest goal [would be to] expand the middle school outreach programs… we got a good start on it and made some significant progress this year. It's really important because it will help improve diversity and our place in the [Ann Arbor] community. I also want to work on making sure everyone's voice is heard. I think [Forum Council] having more communication with the student body, we’re gonna get more stuff done.”
