Students strive to bring equity to city schools

Juniors Aida Radoncic and Tristan Burchard represent QSI at Students and Educators for Equity (SEE). SEE’s mission is to eradicate disproportionality to create a more equitable community. SEE is designed to figure out what those things are and try to give everyone fair access to educational experiences. 

“We focus on creating more educational equity throughout schools in NYC to make student life easier and more fair,” said Burchard. “We work on several mini projects throughout the year which all build up to a larger project that works towards improving student life in QSI.” 

According to their website, SEE is “youth-driven.” Humanities teacher and advisor, Mr. Daniel Robertson, follows this approach.

“My role is basically just to help guide them, but they do all of the work. They go to meetings every month with other schools that I don’t go to,” he said.

SEE’s first initiative was to assess how students perceived equity in their schools. Burchard and Radoncic created a survey for students in order to gather data. Based on the survey results from 467 students, the data showed that most were not involved in clubs and sports. 

“QSI will benefit through this program since SEE will be working towards fixing an issue that will be determined through the school survey we have conducted,” said Burchard. “We are here to improve student life by acknowledging what students feel is an issue in QSI and taking action towards fixing it.”

“Our focus is to encourage students to build more student-teacher relationships through clubs and activities,” said Radoncic. “These relationships will help students feel comfortable when communicating with teachers and motivated to continue working hard.”