After the Halloween spirit week from October 26-30, Elective Leadership and Student Government Association (SGA) are preparing for their next events. Both Leadership and SGA have said that they have been a supporting pillar for students during this virtual time and have been diligently working to benefit the school and staff, as their top priorities are to continue to spread school spirit and mental health awareness.

“The workload has increased heavily for teachers, and Leadership has developed many different plans/platforms that will help to streamline various announcements and activities regardless of in-person or virtual [school],” Elective Leadership teachers James Mackenzie and Kristine Plaugher responded together in an email.  

Leadership is an elective open to anyone, and a group of students fundraising and promoting various school activities. SGA is a body of governing students, advocating for their concerns and as well as helping the school stay motivated and united. Due to online school limiting the number of possible activities, it’s been hard for Leadership and SGA to bring together students and plan events.

“Starting the year online was definitely a huge setback because it’s hard to plan events and spread positivity virtually,” Student Advisory Council (SAC) and SGA representative senior Haerin Esther said. “However, I think it also reinforces the importance of focusing on mental health, equity [in technology and resources] and being creative with the ways SGA operates this year.”

Some challenges Leadership and SGA are facing are funding, lack of interpersonal communication and no physical advertising. 

“This year I am super excited to have more time to get to know each of the members in Leadership and more of the faculty, because we have been doing meet and greets with them during class, which is super awesome,” Leadership executive board representative and junior Miranda Schuman said. 

They are currently working to expand their social media and virtual outreach to the school, spreading Christmas school spirit and coming up with future community service opportunities. 

“We’ve been using a variety of different resources to try and get the word out, including things like the Chantilly Leadership Instagram page, The Knightly News broadcast and FCPSOn [Google Classrooms],” Mackenzie and Plaugher said.