IUSD’s annual Student Advocacy Program allows students across the district to suggest ideas for implementing positive change in education, whether through curriculum, diversity or budgeting. This year, six students representing Northwood are attending the annual Sacramento Advocacy trip to share their main goals. 

Here are a few of our student advocates sharing their visions:

Louise Macatula (12) 

“I am especially passionate about equal opportunity for all students regardless of socioeconomic class or race and creating a sustainable future environmentally. For example, one of my goals is to utilize compost bins throughout high schools to reduce carbon emissions due to food waste.”

Niharika Mahesh (11)

“A lot of our sports are funded by boosters or parents. I hope to have more transparency when it comes to financing, down to the nitty gritty details. But also, funding all trickles down, so I also hope to increase the base funding per student in every district, to help ours, but also help other less fortunate towns.”

Caleigh Nystrom (12)

“I switched [my advocacy target] to additionally advocating for more of a push for humanities curriculum and responsible AI usage. There’s a lot of things in development, both in terms of teaching educators how to cope with AI and misinformation and in this age of the internet, dealing with how to utilize that more in lessons.” 

Emily Yokota (11)
“I was previously Northwood’s’ student rep [to the school board], where I sat in at IUSD board meetings and gave reports about Northwood each month while also giving reports back to ASB about a variety of topics, from our budget to new propositions that will affect us. Throughout this process, the biggest thing I’ve learned is: funding is everything. Our goal is to up our budget so we can have things like ethnic studies and funding for our arts, but also to find a way to get that money without taking from others’ funding.” 

Alice Park (12)

“I’ve noticed and personally experienced a lack of resources and support socially and mental health-wise to immigrant students. My future visions for education policy and advocacy is of more accessible and a greater amount of resources offered to immigrant students in adjusting to American school systems.”