Clubs are a place for students to connect with one another and explore new things that might not necessarily be included in a typical school day. Clubs allow for students to connect across grade levels over common interests. However, the school does not offer enough opportunities to go to clubs.

SPA offers 48 student-run clubs this school year. There is a wide variety of clubs, from Sip Society, where you get different kinds of drinks every club meeting, to Beads for Humanity, where students make bracelets to raise money for cancer research. Students have so many options, but there is not enough time allowed for students to explore their options.

In a typical week, there are four free x-periods. Clubs and affinity groups are supposed to meet every Thursday x-period. However, this semester, clubs have met only once in the two months since the new year. This leaves the students wondering why the school doesn’t prioritize clubs, especially if they boost student interaction, leadership skills, and represent the school well.

The ever-changing schedule also leads to a lack of consistency for club leaders, making it difficult to plan things out with such short notice. Clubs like Science Olympiad and Math Team represent the school in competitions and win awards. The Math Team and Science Olympiad took to hosting practice after school. However, having practice during this time excludes students who cannot stay after school.This affects teachers too. By disregarding their time, teachers who volunteer to oversee the club are needed outside of school hours more often to support their students, and still are not getting paid for their time outside of school hours.

This year, there has been an increase in morning assemblies to encourage students to engage with the community. These assemblies are usually around ten minutes long and include student announcements. However, having assemblies so often has created a major misuse of student and faculty time. Days with two assemblies, where there has been a morning assembly, and then later in the day, a full assembly during x-period, feels like an unproductive use of the community’s time. Instead of having announcements in person, the school newsletter is a great place to share student and faculty announcements. This could be remedied by replacing some of the assemblies with club time.

Clubs are a valuable way to increase student participation and community involvement. Students should take advantage of the opportunity that these clubs create, show up consistently, and take them seriously out of respect for the club’s time. In response, the school should offer more opportunities for students to participate in these activities during the school day instead of the increased amount of assemblies that the student body has had recently.