Back in October, San Luis Obispo High School Students took part in a school-wide survey called Youth Truth. The survey was meant to gather student feedback on school events, administrators, policies, and more. However, while plenty of information was gathered on the students of SLOHS, many are left wondering – what happens now? Who sees these results? What are they going to do with them? Expressions has the answers to these questions and why these results will be beneficial to the future of SLOHS.

  The YouthTruth survey was conducted by the San Luis Coastal Unified School District Superintendent’s Student Senate, a group led by district superintendent Eric Prater, tasked with discussing issues and inspiring change within SLCUSD. The Student Senate has been working alongside an organization called YouthTruth that aims to create surveys that “harnesses student and stakeholders perceptions to help educators accelerate improvements in their K–12 schools and classrooms,” according to the YouthTruth Website.

Having received the results of October’s survey back from YouthTruth, the Student Senators have been combing through the feedback over for the past few months.

“I’m on the board that runs that stuff. We ran a survey in October and now we’re going to look at it all and make changes at school. The survey is the reason there’s no more required math homework, so it’s pretty important,” said sophomore Noah Clausen.

  The YouthTruth survey has been conducted every year since 2017, and improvement can already be seen in several of the categories surveyed. Based on the results, the most significant improvement came in the ‘College and Career Readiness’ category. Students felt a substantial change in the amount of resources aimed at improving their post-high-school readiness, due in part to the addition of fourth counselor Chris Inman a few years ago. Other improvements came in academic rigor and student engagement, as well as relationships (including both student-student and student-teacher bonds). This speaks to the importance of surveys like these, as all of these categories are essential parts of high school life and seem like no-brainers in terms of finding things to improve in school.

  However, one area that saw decline from recent years was the category regarding school culture. As indicated in the report from YouthTruth, this is largely due to the poor engagement and low class spirit of the sophomore class. Sophomores tended to score lower on questions divided by grade level, and several sophomore representatives on the Student Senate have admitted that their class is particularly weak when it comes to morale and engagement.

  “The sophomore class is unethical and they’re disrespectful to literally everyone on campus. Not surprising,” said junior Vivian Swenson-Ruiz.

  As a student that sees both the culture of SLOHS and the meetings at Student Senate, I can agree that the lack of spirit put forth by the sophomore class is disheartening. Perhaps this is a change that can come with more surveys like these, as other aspects of SLOHS culture have seen a positive improvement as a result. 

  The survey will continue its annual rounds next fall. Ideally, with the start of next school year will come more changes, like the lack of math homework, that will improve the less appealing aspects of school culture. Stay tuned for next year’s results, hopefully the sophomore class is able to turn their act around.