Although many students complain about school, they usually don’t have the opportunity to take action and influence changes. For the first time, on Feb. 11, 25 students from elementary, middle, and high schools in the Walnut Valley Unified School District attended superintendent Robert Taylor’s student advisory council to help make changes within their school.

The principals and superintendent of WVUSD wanted to know the students’ perspective on the changes they wanted on campus.

Diamond Bar High School sophomores Hampton Douglas and Carissa Martinez, juniors Morgan Pak and Monica Lin, and senior Samuel Chiang attended the meeting. It began with students introducing themselves and writing down someone that they looked up to as a mentor, and why.

Then, they were split into random groups and discussed the problems with the superintendent. Towards the end, the principals from each of the schools came in and the students presented their ideas to them.

Students agreed that drugs are an on-going problem in schools due to the lack of knowledge students had about them.

They mentioned that strengthening student-teacher relationships would lead to improvement on work.

Administrators are discussing the problems and are trying to find solutions. The student advisory council meeting will continue to take place every five to six weeks.

“[I hope] that our problems that we’re telling the superintendent would have a solution to them and something would actually change,” Douglas said.