In an all-school election on April 26, the student body elected Lisa Tao as the all-school president for 2024-25. Joshua Carter will be all-school vice president.
Turnout for the April 26 election was about 84% of the student body: 86% of 11th graders, 82% of 10th graders and 84% of 9th graders.
Lisa was Class of 2025 vice president as a sophomore and Class of 2025 president this year.
Lisa’s responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What should students know about you as you step into your new role as president?
This year with elections was definitely a unique one since many of the all-school positions were running unopposed, but I’d just like to say I am so so grateful to everyone who took time to support me, my friends and everyone who got elected to Student Council. I’m genuinely so passionate about Student Council and what we do, and I’m just so excited to get this opportunity to continue doing what I love and hopefully create a great year for everyone else.
What are your main goals or priorities now that you’ve been elected?
My main goal is to make information available to the student body. By keeping the Student Council website and collaborating with the Midway, I hope to make information about university and AP courses more accessible to people who want to take the classes.
I also hope to increase communication between students and faculty. This has already started, where the all-school president and all-school vice president will be able to sit in on the steering committee meetings to talk about administrative work and things that go on behind the scenes. So, we all want to make that information accessible to students. I also want to keep up the energy for all-school events like International Day, spirit week, Labstock and all of that. Since we had such an amazing record year, I’m hoping to do even better next year.
How do you plan to involve the student body in decision-making processes?
I definitely want to make student voices more heard, and one way to do that is through the U-High suggestion box, which we’ve had available for the past couple of years on the Student Council website, but it’s not really a well known initiative by Student Council. I’d like to popularize that to make clear to students that they have a way to directly communicate with Student Council members. We can take those ideas and spread them to the faculty or whoever needs to hear them.
How do you plan to address student desires while working with faculty and the administration?
It’s really hard to get a lot of initiatives passed, which mostly deal with homework extensions or absences. We’re going to try our best to make things easier through hosting more stress-relieving events or helping upcoming seniors and juniors with the college process through other initiatives. It will definitely be a challenge, and we are going to do what we can because, being realistic, there is a limitation to what we can do. We’ve gotten so much stuff done in the past that has definitely helped students with homework and stress, so I hope we continue this.
What lessons will you use next year that you’ve learned from your time on Student Council?
My first year on Student Council in sophomore year, I was really nervous because I didn’t really know how things worked. But through my two years, I’ve learned so much on how to communicate with teachers, especially Ms. Campos because she does so much. I feel so much more confident with things like event planning and bill leading. I hope to take this developed confidence into next year and spread that to new Student Council members and make the environment a better place so we can be as productive as possible.
Are there any changes or improvements you hope to bring to the school or student community during your term?
One thing I personally enjoyed in high school were the spirit events and assemblies, so I hope to maybe have more of those, maybe an extra spirit week. I hope to also make Student Council internally more productive. We’ve had some trouble with that in the past. Last year, we had the quarterly updates initiative, instead of semesterly updates. I think putting those updates in a video could be more fun for Student Council members but also for the student body in general, so you don’t have to read through such a long document and you can get updates from Student Council in a minute or two.
Creating more opportunities in the first place so that a wider range of interests are covered is one strategy. But also, letting students have more say in the themes of spirit week, dances and other events. Most importantly, just making students more involved in these processes so they’re more excited.
In a year from now, what would you like to say you’ve accomplished during your time as all-school president?
A year from now, I would like to see students taking part in a more open school environment. I hope for there to be more interaction between underclassmen and upperclassmen. Overall, I’d like to reflect on a really fun year where the Student Council was more productive, especially.
