As the school year passes on, there’s one team behind everything: the Associated Student Body (ASB). ASB is in charge of building school spirit, creating fun events, and keeping the school in check. In order for everything to work, advertising needs to happen, and no one other than Erick Sanchez is the best at his job!

Q: How do you plan to balance the diverse needs and interests of the student body while creating inclusive events and initiatives this year?

A: We have made google forms asking for interests in events people want to see this year and we’ll try to make forms for feedback on events we plan to see how we can improve. As for inclusivity, we will make sure it’s inclusive to everyone by double-checking and making sure it’s good with our advisor. 

Q: What Challenges have you identified in fostering school spirit, and how do you intend to address them throughout the school year?

A: People don’t really participate in planned events and our school spirit isn’t really there, so we’ve tried to make sure that well-known people are going to events because people follow them. If someone hears a friend or well-known person is going, more people tag along and join in on the school spirit. 

Q: How do you plan to adapt your leadership style to meet this year’s challenges?

A: We plan to ask people what they want to see this year and we’ll try to put the student body first. We want to focus on student content and on the needs, wants, and interests of the MaCES students. 

Q: How do you plan to involve more students in leadership decisions and activities who typically aren’t engaged?

A: We tried to get different people from areas like football, cheer, computer science, etc. to join leadership and we took their perspectives to involve everyone. This way, everyone feels included because they have representation from the different extracurriculars they’re part of and their voices are being heard.

Q: Can you tell us about strategies you will use to ensure all voices, including our underrepresented groups are heard and valued in  your decision-making process?

A: We’re going to try to go to every grade and include them because everyone has different views and perspectives. I know that 6th graders don’t really get their voices heard and so we had middle school leadership come in and share their views so that both high school and middle school get to share and participate in events. 

Q: How are you planning to balance traditions and innovation when planning events and activities this year?

A: This year we are trying to keep in mind what traditions we have so far, but since we’re a fairly new school, we don’t have many traditions. Those we do have though, we are going to try to keep and just build and improve on them while trying to make new ones. 

Q: What are some of the ways you will collaborate with other student organizations to create a more unified and supportive school community?

A: We are going to collaborate with school clubs–returning and new–to see what they want to do. We’ll do part of this through Club Rush, an upcoming event, and we will also have our treasurer working with them and offering our help to whoever and for whatever these clubs may need. 

Q: How do you plan to reflect and evaluate your leadership effectiveness throughout the year?  What will you use to measure your effectiveness?

A: Our advisor, Ms. Navarro, created an assignment for us to reflect on ourselves and the events that happen. We will reflect on how we can build from our mistakes on certain events and improve on what happened and what didn’t happen. 

Q: How are you planning to go about spirit week and gaining participation plus making sure everyone follows the themes?

A: As for spirit week, we’re going to try to specify the themes more and create different ones that are accessible to everyone, meaning you won’t have to go out and buy something to participate. Our goal is to create themes that students can easily make an outfit for. 

Q: Every year we have gotten school-issued shirts. Are there any plans for that this year?

A: We are for sure issuing a shirt, but we are wanting to see if we could do spirit polos because MaCES parents were letting us know that it would bring more spirit into the school. However, it is a tentative idea and it has a 50% chance of happening and a 50% chance of not happening. Even if the polo idea falls through, the school spirit shirts are definitely happening. 

Q: What events do you guys have planned this year?

A: This year we are planning fundraisers, sport rallies, homecoming, and some lunch events. We were planning on doing lunch events so that we are able to unite the school a bit more and so that students have that option of participating during lunch if they can’t attend after-school events. 

Q: Is there anything else you think I should know or something I didn’t ask?

A: Not really, I’ve said most, if not all, of what I needed to say.