ACA Middle School has been participating in School Participatory Budgeting since the spring of 2023.
School Participatory Budgeting (SPB) in Arizona is an innovative civic learning tool designed to improve student agency, collaboration, and critical-thinking skills and prepare young people to be active, informed, and engaged participants in civic life for the long term. Students “learn democracy by doing” through a process of participating in a SPB steering committee on campus, gathering ideas from their peers, developing proposals, and campaigning and voting to fund improvement projects that build stronger school communities
ACA students were given $5000 to use to improve the school. A committee of interested students was formed and they set out by generating ideas of improvements they would like to be seen implemented around the school. Students then narrowed this list down to their top 3 improvements and had the 5-8 student body vote. Students overwhelmingly voted to improve the bathrooms in 5-8.
The next steps will be meeting with the school's CEO, Melissa Holdaway, and developing an action plan and budget - then we will get to making the improvements! This is a great way for our students to learn real life money and project management skills. We cannot wait to see the final results!
