Piedmont High Plays, Wellness Center, Sexual Education, Student Survey
On March 8th, 2017, the School Board had its monthly meeting at City Hall. The School Board meets to talk about issues and events that relate to the Piedmont Unified School District. There were a few major issues discussed at this meeting.
The beginning of the discussion was a round of announcements about current events by the members of the Board, such as Max Miller (Millennium High School representative), Superintendent Randall Booker, School Board President Sarah Pearson, and others. Much of the discussion was about the H1 Bond (School Facilities), which was voted on by Piedmont and passed recently. A man came up to the podium to talk about bonds for the H1 funding, talking about state grants and programs such as the Career Technical Education program. Board member Cory Smegal also talked about interviewing architects for the building at the high school which is partially what H1 does.
Aside from H1, a variety of other things were touched upon. Many members of the Board praised Piedmont High School plays, and said that they brought the community together.
The Wellness Center was also mentioned multiple times, and was also praised by the Board members.
Towards the end of the meeting a man came up and gave a powerpoint about sexual assault prevention and healthy relationships. There is a plan to give surveys to students about sex, rape, contraceptives, pornography, STI’s, etc. There was a debate on if the survey should be given to middle schoolers or just high schoolers. Personally, I think that it should be given to middle schoolers because despite our youth at that time, we are more knowledgeable than adults seem to realize about those topics.
Before the meeting, I was able to interview Mr. Dimitri Magganas. Mr. Magganas is a regular at city meetings, citing an interest in dealing with city issues. He is mostly interested in H1, which he is in favor of. Despite being in favor of it, we talked for a long time about the difficulty of finding a contractor, and how the time and cost of building is rising in the east bay.
In the meeting however, Mr. Magganas went to the podium to talk about International Women’s Day and not H1, as he said in my interview, he was not worried about getting involved with H1 until later on in the process.
During the middle of the meeting, my kindergarten teacher’s death was mentioned, as there was a memorial service that night. I had gone to the service before the meeting, and decided to speak about her. I was nervous to speak, but was glad I was able to talk about her as she had a big impact on me as a little kid.
By Sam Williamson, Piedmont High School Senior
