There are always ideas that are being discussed by students across the district, but is there always a way to express those ideas to a larger group?

For the upcoming school year, Jaguars will be continuing their involvement with Douglas County School District’s Student Advisory Group (SAG). With this school year coming to an end, Activities Director Ty Clark sent out Canvas Message to all underclassmen  to bring attention to our continued involvement in SAG, the goal of the message was to encourage more students to grab the opportunity to voice their opinions.

“We want kids with their own voice,” Clark said. “If you’re interested, show up, [and] don’t wait,”

SAG is a DCSD-only, student-focused group that helps give ideas directly from high schoolers to the Board of Education, rather than decisions just being made without student input. SAG helps the board get better ideas on what is doing well or not in and around schools. Students who are involved can attend meetings and discuss current issues or opinions they would like to address. It allows for leadership positions for kids and perspective shifts when it comes to making decisions.

“It has been around for a while, [and] several students have been a part of it,” Clark said. 

Having students get a say in what the board does has made a positive impact in schools and has helped to give students a voice in current issues. The main efforts of SAG in the past couple of years have been school safety, mental health, growth equity and environmental impacts. More conversations that have been ongoing in SAG have been making a final verdict on new AI/tech and cell phone policies as well as looking to incorporate a personal finance and literacy development track for incoming students.

Something that has been a problem in the past few years with SAG has been the attendance; unfortunately, it has wened throughout schools in the district. There has been little to no representation in surrounding schools; Mountain Vista High School only had two participants and Douglas County High School had none.

“Rock Canyon has had the most representation in the last couple of years,” Clark said. 

With twenty participants, Jags had the highest number of students from any high school. Yet, increasing participation from all schools in the district could lead to SAG having a bigger impact on students, ensuring a larger range of opportunities and voices for all students to be equal. 

SAG welcomes all members who send in an application, and it is a very flexible process that allows anyone who wants to have a voice to use it. Because of this, there is no (specific) due date for the application. The first official meeting is Aug. 24, at the beginning of the next school year, meaning that is the “unofficial” due date.