On November 21, students decided the fate of service learning after hearing former ambassador to Australia Jeffrey Bleich speak. The results are in, and the issues laid out in front of students’ computer screens that day have been narrowed down to four.

They are: environment/pollution for freshman, poverty/homelessness for sophomores, discrimination for juniors, and economic disparity for seniors.

“We used the website [nextlesson.org] to do percentage rankings, so everyone would have their top choice,” assistant principal Anne Dolid said.

Rather than having the issues chosen by their respective classes follow through throughout high school, the issues will remain static and set in stone for each grade.

“The issues will always stay with the grade level,” Dolid said. “Freshman will always be doing environment/pollution, sophomores always will be doing poverty/homelessness, etc.”

Sophomore Leah Kochendoerfer is excited for the opportunity to help others in a learning environment.

“It’s something we can all do together, an easy way to improve our society,” Kochendoerfer said.

Specific plans for organizing projects have not yet been laid out. Dolid said that the planning committee of administrators and teachers invited several students for brainstorming, but only one showed up. For now, she said that the goal is to partner with Community-Based Organizations, C.B.O’s.

“We want students to own it,” Dolid said. “If students are already working with C.B.O’s, then that would be good to move forward. We need that student voice.”

Initially, the student voice was quite different than the results produce from the online tallying. All classes’ averages had the issue of discrimination in their top two to the surprise of the planning committee.

“Everybody came up with discrimination, which is something students have voiced annoyance with, but everyone still picked it” Dolid said. “It was just interesting that so many people chose it after many said they didn’t want to talk about it after the past year’s lessons and assemblies.”

In order to make sure students could work with topics that were both practical to execute and topics that they were interested, all issues came from the top four of each class.

Dolid said that she wanted every class to get their first choice, although realistically, this was not possible due to the repetition among classes.

Now that the issues are set in stone, the key will be to find opportunities in the community. Dolid said that science teacher Marna Chamberlain is in the process of developing a project that links to environment and poverty.

Chamberlain, who is currently working on a solar powered cooker, said that she would like to implement her project into service learning to possibly ship the cookers to impoverished areas.

“Kids have to be an active part [of service learning] in order to learn,” Chamberlain said.

The first days for service learning implementation are in March, and a hands-on day in May before Day on the Green. Exact plans for students have not been decided yet, Dolid said.

“Things like [service learning] are modern day equivalents that make learning more interesting today, we’re excited,” Dolid said.