Cross Student Council Disbanded

The student council at Wilbur Cross High School returned this fall to find out the principal had dissolved the group and created new rules to rebuild it as a more ​“inclusive” organization — without consulting students.

News of the abrupt change came a few days into the school year at the city’s largest high school, which sits on East Rock’s Mitchell Drive.

Students had been waiting to see what their future would hold after Cross Principal Peggy Moore nullified the results of a student council election that took place at the end of last school year after an outspoken student activist won the presidency. Click here to read more about that decision. (That activist’s politics club was also disbanded after he organized a downtown protest in favor of more spending on textbooks and less on administrators.)

Students thought they might get the chance to hold another election, this time under rules that the principal approved of. Instead, they found out that their group no longer exists.

Isaiah Lee (pictured above), who was elected as council president last year, said he was not directly informed of the decision.

“Ms. Moore did not inform anyone — the decision was made that no one knew of,” Lee said. Instead, he found out the news in an email last week.

Student council ​“is officially disbanded,” Alexandra Torresquintero reported in an email to her peers after meeting with Moore. Torresquintero was elected as the council’s vice-president last year.

Moore said Thursday that the school has no student council at the moment and is working to rebuild one that better represents Cross.

Student council should not be ​“a group of elitist kids that say, ​‘We run Cross,’” as it was in the past, Moore said. ​“We want total inclusion in the building.” Cross is often described as having two schools within one: a small AP/honors track (to which Moore was referring) and the general student population.

Lee said he doesn’t plan to be involved in the student council’s new incarnation. He has decided to step back from the council and focus on getting into college next year. But he objected to the way the decision was made — the latest in the line of decisions being made without student input.

“I personally don’t feel it’s fair to these other students who worked so hard, to have all that taken away,” he said.

“Students should be involved in the decisions about the school — especially about the organizations that they run.”

The incident capped a series of run-ins where students said their voices were being quashed at school: The student political club was disbanded after Lee led a march on City Hall in favor of more spending on textbooks and less on administrators. The issue arose at a mayoral debate this summer, when Mayor John DeStefano defended Moore and candidates challenging him for the Democratic mayoral nomination criticized what they called an example of a stifling of free speech that marks how the schools and the city are run. (Click here to read an article written by schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo in Moore’s defense.)

After that incident, Lee won the student council election, and Moore nullified the results. Now the council, which tended to use less aggressive tactics in dealing with school administrators, has been eliminated.

Lee called on students, parents and taxpayers to call the school about the latest decision.

In an interview in her office after school Thursday, Moore defended her decision to dissolve the group.

“Nobody at this school including myself has ever tried to stifle a student’s comments or stopped a student from being positive,” Moore said. ​“But there are rules in this building.”

The old student council didn’t follow the rules requiring having an adviser present during the election, she said.

Moore was asked why the student council wasn’t consulted in the process of revamping the group.

“We don’t have a student council,” she replied.

She added that those students who were involved in the past will be permitted to run for election to be part of the new group.

The new rules, she said, will replace the student council’s constitution, which was created in 1979. Realizing the old constitution was outdated, Moore said, administrators set to work over the summer to come up with new bylaws for the group. Assistant principals researched bylaws of other student councils across the state and settled on new bylaws. They gave a set of bylaws to a group of teacher leaders, who agreed to them, she said.

According to the new rules, each of 70 homerooms will elect a student to be its representative. Those 70 kids will make up the student council, which will then elect officers, Moore said.

Al Meadows (pictured), the longtime adviser to the student council, said the new setup aims for a goal Cross has long sought to achieve: A student council that better represents the school’s 1,400 kids.

“We’re trying to open it up to everybody,” Meadows said.

In the past, any student was permitted to become a member of the student council. However, a small number of kids chose to participate. Lee estimated 25 kids were involved last year; Meadows put that number at 10.

Moore said students felt excluded by the group that was running the council. With the new setup, she said, ​“I think more and more students will feel comfortable. It’s not a handful of kids who are friends.”

Meadows said the new arrangement will also lessen the burden on the members of the student council, who last year put immense individual effort into directing coat drives and blood drives. Now more students will be involved, spreading out the workload, he said.

Meadows said all 70 homerooms will hold elections for student council representatives sometime before next Friday.

Moore said the new student council will be a more productive forum. ​“Before, the student council had no real goals or set directions,” she said. ​“We thought this year we would have activities and objectives that they wanted to meet.”

To those who may not like the new rules, Moore advised, ​“There are a lot of things in life as you grow older that you won’t like.”