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Guest Commentary

Coulson: Adults ought to lead with what is best for students

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I am a 14-year-old student and began my school experience at Scottsdale Unified School District and have attended several campuses within our community.

I’ve been to Scottsdale Learning Center, Redfield Elementary, BASIS Scottsdale and returned to SUSD at Desert Canyon Middle School. I currently attend Desert Mountain High School.

There have been many conversations about our classrooms, public education and after watching a recent news story, I felt the need to share student perspective on our campuses, leadership and overall vibe at my high school.

My campus is welcoming, supportive and fun. If you’ve not attended a Wolf Pack Athletic event at DHMS; I personally invite you to attend one.

There is an abundance of students on campus with wide ranges of diversity in backgrounds, experiences, perspectives and wardrobe choices. As students, we have plenty of opportunities to learn, understand people who have different values and opinions than our own.

My parents tell me it’s important to have the ability to listen, negotiate, learn and grow from others so that we are all better prepared to choose career paths, engage with institutions and grow up into the future leaders for the community. We want to make our community proud. Equity and inclusion truly make students and parents feel welcome.

From my time in Mrs. Ellis’ kindergarten class, we’ve been taught to treat each other with kindness and respect. There is an effort to remove SUSD’s leadership due to a claim surrounding racism. Initially, I suspected this was a deep fake. It can’t be real. As a proud SUSD student, I’d like to change this story and tell you that knowledge and inclusion are highly valuable for Scottsdale’s student base.

Dr. Menzel and the administration have demonstrated the exact opposite of racism. They’ve created beautiful classrooms full of a unique student base united in the common goal of learning and supporting each other.

I appreciate everything Dr. Menzel and our teachers did for us during the pandemic. It was a hard time for all of us, incredibly weird for the kids. Even weirder when all the adults fight on social media and cannot seem to get along. That’s all in the past now. We’re back in school, we are learning, healing and having fun. We’re doing our best.

My hope is that the adults calling for removal would rethink their position, stop the fighting and arguing. Lead with what is best for our students. I am proud to have Dr. Menzel at SUSD. Losing Dr. Menzel would only negatively impact our district, our classrooms and our students.

I’m kindly asking the adults to do better and stop unnecessary complaints and infighting. Time out! Take the time to listen and understand before making extreme claims to remove talented leadership. This doesn’t seem reasonable.

Thanks for reading.