The Redwood High School Site Council is a group of students, parents, teachers and administration who meet every two weeks to work towards their goal of fostering a safe, inclusive and educational school environment. Their most recent meeting on March 10 was held to discuss the selection process for graduation speeches as well as academic integrity.
Site Council meetings are student-run, with senior Brittney Blair serving as Site Council President. Junior Georgia Doucette is the vice president, who served as president for the March 10 meeting due to Blair’s absence. Another student representative attending the meeting was sophomore Lily Scott.
Members of Site Council include Principal Barnaby Payne, staff members who volunteer to participate, parents selected by the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and an elected representative from each grade level.
“The Redwood High School Site Council promotes empathy, kindness and respect for oneself and others. [It] fosters a safe environment that values both personal and academic goals, celebrates individuality and cultivates tolerance and inclusiveness,” Doucette said.
Inclusivity was emphasized many times throughout the meeting, particularly by Spanish teacher Maria Civano who suggested a format for picking speeches that would allow non-native English speakers to participate.
“We can teach a [English learner] student to express their ideas in English,” Civano said.
The Site Council also reviewed the Redwood artificial intelligence (AI) policy after recent teacher feedback gathered by Principal Dr. Barnaby Payne.
“Something that [teachers have] brought up was a continuing challenge of academic integrity and artificial intelligence and what policies and practices we have to support teachers and students,” Payne said.
The Site Council reviewed a five-point rubric created by a district-wide AI task force. Although there is no district-wide AI policy, and this rubric has not been approved by the Tamalpais Union School board, it can still be implemented at Redwood.
“If the board makes a policy decision on AI before the end of the year, then that would supersede this discussion. But in the meantime, we don’t have an AI policy as a school other than our academic integrity policy,” Payne said.
The rubric consists of increasing amounts of AI use, categorized into five separate and clear groups. Teachers can tell students what number correlates to the amount of AI a student can use on a specific assignment.
“One of my teachers actually used it. It was cool to see it and it worked. I understood what I was supposed to do,” Scott said.
Staff and students identified problems and potential solutions regarding the use of AI from their different perspectives.
“I personally think AI is much more harmful in a test setting because if you’re using AI in homework, it’s mostly harmful to yourself because you’re not going to know the material in a test setting. But in a test setting, it’s harmful to every other student in the room,” Doucette said.
Teachers had differing strategies to combat AI use, such as using features that restrict students from changing tabs while testing, limiting homework and increasing in-class essays.
The next meeting will occur on March 24. The agenda and minutes can be found on the Redwood website.
