An Irvington High School Junior was anonymously interviewed on what they wished the administration knew.

I think the issue at the root of any student discontent in regards to our administration is just the lack of student-admin relations beyond disciplinary actions.

It’s extremely important for the administration of any organization to be visibly involved and engaged with events/activities/ongoing issues in the organization, and schools aren’t an exception in that sense.

The administration does a ton of work to make Irvington run smoothly, but students don’t know what they do because they rarely see admin out and about, or feel like it’s difficult to communicate with them.

I don’t think they focus enough on CRM, customer relation management. We’re not customers as students, but there’s a certain level of happiness that you have to maintain within the student body.

There are certain things issues they are not addressing, for example all the schedule changes this year- that was crazy. But we never heard the administration explain how they are trying to solve this issue and how they will prevent this from happening again in the future.

We understand that there’s important meetings to be attended but it’s also important for students to have a platform/forum to talk with, get to know, and discuss things, ask questions, etc. with our administration.

The fundamental thing is that everyone wants their voice and opinion and ideas to be heard and acknowledged and understood, and we as students often lack the proactivity to reach out and go through the long process of getting ourselves heard.

So if the administration takes steps to bridge that gap by creating spaces/allocating time for direct communication and discussion with students on student-issues/topics relevant to the student body, then that’s a huge step in the right direction.

I know that ASG (Associated Student Government) is trying to open communication and invite them to a public relations meeting, but I think it’s just a slow process of really realizing that the way students perceive the administration contributes to the overall environment of the campus.

But I think they’re doing better this year because they’ve opened up their weekly advisory meetings for student/staff walk-ins if there’s things people would like to discuss.

If they continue down that path of open forum and opportunities for discussion then that can lead to a much better relationship with the student body as a whole

It’s all CRM to be honest; Irvington isn’t a business, but holding our CRM to a high standard can do a lot to boost morale and sentiment!