Student leadership is an important part of high school. Whether it’s attending to issues the student body has or helping teachers, leadership roles are meant to promote positive changes. The student leaders of FHS are putting in the effort to help students and teachers. 

Mary Cornett, senior class president, addresses student issues in order to make positive changes. “As senior class president, I actually want to use my title and role to listen to the student body and promote change if needed,” Cornett said. 

Because of Covid-19, students have been assigned classwork online, as well as in person, and have had problems with this way of learning. 

“One example is that I went to the Head of Curriculum to meet with her to talk about complaints that I’ve heard about Edgenuity and remote learning,” Cornett said. “There have been a lot of complaints about that from parents and students.”

Cornett observed that students are struggling with aspects of how they are learning this year. 

“I think that it’s a problem that students aren’t really learning,” Cornett said. “They’re going to in-person learning, and they’re just on a computer the whole time. When they go home, they have double the amount of homework, and they don’t have any notes to study for their tests.” 

Cornett hopes her work as president benefits the students of FHS.

“As president, I want to try to make school a better environment for the students,” Cornett said. “I hope to be a positive aspect for the student body.”

Student council members are also working hard to make sure the student body and teachers are taken care of as best as they can. 

Junior Avery Crouse, Student Council president of the class of 2022, explained what the Student Council members strive to achieve overall. 

“Our job is to listen to what everyone wants and figure out a way to execute it in a reasonable way,” Crouse said. “We’re here to help and listen to complaints or suggestions from students or other teachers or administrators, and then work together to create a sense of spirit and have cool activities like the dances.” 

Senior Lauren Grona, executive council secretary, explained the idea of helping teachers as something Student Council can take on to make a difference. 

“An idea that was mentioned by Audrey Benfield was teacher appreciation, especially with online and remote learning, as it has doubled a lot of the teachers’ work,” Grona said. “We could all donate some time to grade papers or do anything the teacher needs, kind of like being an aide group. [We could] go around and see who needs help.” 

Senior Audrey Spurgin, Student Council class of 2021 vice president, described one of the focuses of Student Council this year. 

“We want to focus on making sure everyone is included in Student Council,” Spurgin said. “It’s good to see that a bunch of freshmen and sophomores are joining.” 

Student Council members aim to make students feel like they are welcome in the organization. 

“We want people to feel like they’re welcome to join and be a part of something that’s good,” Spurgin said. “We hope to make a difference by doing things for people who are struggling.” 

Senior Annie Myers, executive Student Council president, explained the goals of Student Council during Covid-19. 

“I think one of our biggest goals this year is to try and keep things as normal as possible for the students by throwing the Homecoming dance, the Snowball, and keeping up all of these activities we’ve done in the past few years trying to make it as normal as possible,” Myers said. 

Mrs. Joan Speer, Student Council sponsor, admires the effort Student Council members are putting in toward involving new members. 

“There are 60 active members that come and go, and there are at least 25 who are in officer positions.” Speer said. “They’re doing everything they can to bring in so many people and include so many different roles in this group. It’s truly remarkable.” 

Although some opportunities have not been available to the Student Council members this year, they continue to put in the effort of trying to make a difference at FHS. 

“Usually, they do all this work and get to go to a two-day convention, but that got canceled,” Speer said. “The reward of all their work totally disappeared, and they’re still here doing it. They’re clearly not doing it for the recognition and the praise.”