Opinions

Academic excellence, leadership development, extracurricular opportunities, a comforting environment and a supportive community. These ideals shape all educational institutions. Yet Stuyvesant is currently struggling to achieve them. For our school to excel, its shortcomings must be addressed. But change requires time, cooperative students and administrators willing to listen to the student body and experiment.

Problems with academic achievement and student-administrator communication have been a continuing issue. The school must analyze its faults and address—not ignore—them.

While personal academic achievements have been tremendous this year, overall performance is declining. With record numbers of Intel finalists and qualifiers for the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad, certain students are excelling on a national scale. However, this year’s PSAT scores were lower than in previous years. Physics students are struggling despite more department-wide diagnostic examinations. As more tests are being tacked on to the end of the year, the school is becoming less creative and increasingly standardized.

Our school should continue encouraging individuals to reach dazzling academic heights, but first it must address the needs of the majority of the student body. This means hiring qualified teachers, encouraging creativity rather than increasing standardization and—especially with the upcoming budget cuts—keeping Stuyvesant’s assortment of classes.

Not only is there room for academic improvement, but school-wide communication is also lacking. Student desires have conflicted with administrative visions for the past few years. Last year, the disputes ranged from the installment of scanners to Teitel’s Trident—the plan for teacher identification cards, the new locker policy and out-to-lunch scanners. Students and administrators could not come to an agreement on issues of safety. This led to animosity between the two parties and held each back from doing their respective jobs.

The same difficulties persisted this year. SING! censorship created student discontent, Principal Stanley Teitel took a passive role in the proposed Student Union-college office switch and two individuals were asked to speak at graduation, resulting, once again, in disputes.

These problems stem from a lack of communication between student leaders and administrators. In the case of the Student Union-college office switch, Teitel was not in touch with the wishes of the student body and therefore allowed a painful, tension-ridden feud develop between student leaders and the Parents’ Association, an organization meant to support the student body’s interests.

Choosing the graduation speaker, the most recent controversy, was also an avoidable conflict. While the senior president and vice president are usually responsible for choosing a speaker, they did so after Principal Stanley Teitel had already asked New York Times reporter David Herszenhorn. The senior class is now appealing to the administration to allow their choice, author Jonathan Safran Foer, to speak.

The administration and student body’s tendency to not communicate or cooperate cannot continue in the coming years. Members of the Stuyvesant community must learn to work together and build an environment conducive to all learning.