FLEMINGSBURG — Members of the Fleming County High School Student Council recently created the first, nationally recognized, state student council association.
Library Media Specialist for FCHS and Student Council advisor Paige Sloas said students last year who were members of the council wished to attend conferences, similar to other student organizations, which allows them to branch out from the school and collaborate with people outside of their community.
“Our student council started researching because they wanted to go to a region student council meeting or state student council meeting, and they could only find a national student council meeting,” she said.
The FCHS student council comprises of 24 members, six representing each grade at the school. Each group of six students perform various duties within the school which include acting as board members for a number of programs and organizing events like pep rallies and other student led activities.
After some research, the student council found that there is in fact a state student council organization, and according to Sloas every state had such an organization except Kentucky. After this discovery, the student council set out to rectify this issue by creating the Kentucky Student Council Association.
“They worked with nationals to create it, so they are nationally recognized as a Kentucky Student Council Association,” Sloas said. “There’s a website you can look at and you can see Kentucky now has one.”
Now that a state association has been organized for Kentucky, Sloas stands as executive director and the student council has begun developing a website for the association as well as a logo.
Friday, Oct. 25 was the first meeting of the KSCA summit, which was held at Morehead State University. A press release provided by FCHS Student Council Historian Allison Hedges, Sloas and Senior Student Council President Sydney Dales, composed a list of every Student Council in Kentucky, whether it is nationally recognized or a local organization like Fleming. The two then emailed and called every school, personally inviting them to this event.
The student councils who attended the KSCA summit along with FCHS were George Rogers Clark High School, Greenup County High School, Morgan County High School and Randall K. Cooper High School.
The college’s student government association assisted with organizing the event and provided mentorship, Sloas added.
“Our goal as that big group is that we’re getting together again on Dec. 2 to split up Kentucky and try to get every county and every high school in the state of Kentucky to have a student council in the next five years and come to this state event,” Sloas said.
Sloas said there was a great sense of accomplishment among her students in creating this state association, especially for those who dedicated hours of time into making their goal into a reality.
“There’s about six of them, from the council of 24, that have dedicated and put their heart into the KSCA,” she said, “and they stay and work after school two or three days a week on it — it is not something that happens during school, so it is a lot of after school hours. The day of the event last week there was anxiety and excitement, every feeling that can go through your body was going through and afterwards it was like, ‘we did it.’”
Since the first meeting, Sloas said the council has hit the ground running in preparing for its next meeting in December, creating five-year plans and keeping the hype alive between the other councils that visited by communicating through social media.
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