Paly’s Associated Student Body will request student input on its proposals to change ASB’s current representative system at an ASB meeting on Thursday, Oct. 30.

After receiving feedback from staff members at teacher adviser, Ed Council, and all-staff meetings held in September, ASB has concluded that from its five original proposals, the digital, class, and period representative proposals have the most potential for success, according to Student Activities Director Allison Mullins. ASB will present these proposals to students who attend the Oct. 30 meeting for feedback and discussion.

At the staff meetings, many staff members were enthusiastic about changing or re-implementing the representative system, which has fallen into disuse in recent years, according to Mullins.

“The teachers really wanted to bring back the representative system,” Mullins said.

For the digital representative proposal, representatives would create an e-mail list or Facebook group to notify their classes about information from ASB meetings rather than announcing the information during class periods.

In the class representative proposal, students are chosen from either third or fourth period to attend ASB meetings and report information back to their classes the following day. In past years, ASB has tried to implement this representative system, but without success, according to Mullins.

An alternative is the period representative proposal, in which each class president appoints between eight and 10 representatives from each grade level.

For every proposal, the representatives would attend monthly ASB meetings and assist ASB officers in efforts to keep students aware of school-wide issues and events.

A potential problem with the period proposal is that some students may have prep periods during the chosen period and therefore may not be able to receive information, Mullins said.

ASB is also concerned that the class and digital representative proposals would not have enough teacher involvement, as the representatives would not communicate with students during class periods. In addition, the digital option requires that representatives provide information to their classmates during their free time.

While the digital, class, and period representative choices were relatively popular among staff members, the two proposals that did not receive as much support were the social studies and advisory representative options.

For the social studies option, each social studies class would choose one student to attend ASB meetings. Similarly, the advisory representative proposal requires teacher advisers to choose one representative from each advisory to attend ASB meetings and report back to the class.

According to Social Studies Instructional Supervisor Eric Bloom, the social studies option could be problematic because many upperclassmen are enrolled in more than one history or social studies class, and the representative system may prove to be redundant for these students. In addition, the representatives’ reports could impinge on the amount of time teachers have during class periods, according to Bloom.

As a result, Bloom favors the digital proposal for its efficiency.

“The thing that I am most concerned about is losing more instructional time,” Bloom said. “I believe that a lot could be done with an electronic-based system to get information out and announcements of meetings to make decisions.”

However, Bloom believes that teacher involvement is necessary, regardless of the proposal chosen.

“There needs to be a face-to-face facilitated, or at least in front of a teacher, discussion, so reps can bring thoughts back to the ASB,” Bloom said. “I am an advocate for a system that leverages technology and uses face-to-face meeting to make decisions.”

ASB encourages students who are interested in becoming representatives to attend the Oct. 30 ASB meeting and give feedback on the different proposals, according to Mullins.

“We’re going to advertise to people who want to be representatives, and ask them to come to the meeting,” Mullins said. “That way we can figure out from interested kids how we can get the most coverage.”