A Formal Letter Addressing Concerns and Demands On Behalf Of The
Students Of Crosstown High School
To Alexis Gwen-Miller, other members of Crosstown High administration, members of the
board, and whomever else it may concern, we as the Crosstown High student body are
exercising our constitutional right to protest and using this opportunity to formally voice
our concerns.
We love our school, and this comes from a place of determination to see Crosstown High
succeed. But we feel as if our voices are not being heard, so we're not giving you any
choice but to listen.
One of the fundamental principles that this school was founded on is student voice and choice,
but since the beginning of this school year we have had no control over changes being made to
our education. Students have repeatedly voiced our concerns to administration and our voices
have been repeatedly ignored. There are numerous issues, which we will express fully in this
letter, that have lead to us as students feeling that Crosstown is not fulfilling its promise to give
us a project based, competency based, relationship driven, diverse by design, education.
The first issue we would like to address is the school’s shift towards traditional learning styles
and away from individualized competency based learning. We opted to attend a competency
based school because we didn't want something traditional, if we wanted to go memorize
content for common core standards and have our worth measured by test scores we would go
to one of the many traditional options available. What we want at Crosstown, and what was
originally promised to us, is competency based grades and individual learning plans that meet
students at the level they're at. Learning should be set up in a way that meets us as individual
students where we are, if a student is above grade level work and they’re taking initiative and
doing the work, they should be allowed to excel and get credit for it. If a student needs extra
time and help to understand a concept, or is falling behind, they should be able to get the extra
help they need.
This brings up the issue of the grading scale. Our recent report cards absolutely horribly
reflected students’ academic achievement. Students who are obviously doing extremely well in
their classes and who by competency based standards are well beyond mastery in certain
subject areas, received failing grades. One failing grade on a report card may not matter to you,
and as much as I wish it didn't matter to us, the reality in our society is that our grades affect
everything. Our high school transcripts affect what colleges we get into, and in turn dictate a lot
about our future. Not only that but on an individual level report cards affect a student’s home life,
and in turn their self worth and mental stability. A majority of us have not seen competencies
being used to assess us in class, and this is not the fault of the teachers. Our grading scale has
almost completely shifted to that of a traditional highschool and competency based mastery
assessments only account for 40% of our grade when it should be 100%.

 It's not just how our learning is being assessed that’s the problem, but the curriculum we’re
being forced to take part in. The entirety of the 10th grade is taking an environmental science
class where all we've “learned” is the movement of tectonic plates, the layers of earth’s
atmosphere, and the rock cycle. This is the content we all learned in middle school. Last year
we all took biology and it was our understanding and expectation that this year we would take
chemistry, with the possibility of a physics course. But instead of taking a rigorous, or even
grade level science course, we're all being lectured on content from the 7th grade. Additionally,
every single sophomore is taking Algebra II. Last year, some of us took Algebra I and others
took Geometry. The students who were in the upper level geometry class last year were the
only ones supposed to progress to Algebra II, those of us who took Algebra I were supposed to
continue to Geometry. Due to something unknown to us, everyone from Algebra I just skipped
the entire year of geometry, and will have to take it their junior year. This confusing course
selection just furthers the notion that Crosstown is straying further away from individualized
learning. We should have courses offered that align with students’ needs and ability, we
shouldn't just be stuck with classes that either don't challenge us or are beyond our skill level
just because of a mistake on the school’s part. Furthermore we’re supposed to have some sort
of choice in the courses we take.
Possibly as a combined result of the frustrating core curriculum, a misunderstanding due to lack
of communication from administration, and additional isolated concerns, students are worried
that we won't have all the credits we need to graduate. Crosstown requires 25 credits to
graduate (whereas the state of Tennessee requires 22) but certain students have raised
concerns that at the current rate we might not even meet the lower benchmark.
The main issue that has sparked most of the current collective frustration of the student body, is
the cohort model. Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with the idea behind the current cohort
model. The issue is in how it's being implemented. There is an unfair distribution of students
between the two 10th grade cohorts that, whether intentionally or not, limits diversity in both
cohorts. A large majority of black and minority students in the 10th grade are in cohort B, where
as most of the white students are in cohort A. Many of the students in 10B feel that 10A has far
more privilege in terms of academic opportunities and structure. Due to the fact that cohort B
holds most of the minority and black students, this seems, whether done intentionally or not, to
reflect bias. Whether this was intentional or not is besides the point. Another fundamental
principle of Crosstown High is that it's meant to be “diverse by design.” The fact that either the
school deliberately segregated its students, or ignored race as a factor in splitting up the cohorts
creating an unintentional lack of diversity, proves that the school obviously isn't fulfilling its
original mission of designing a racially and culturally diverse classroom experience.
(paragraph about 10B’s learning structure issues)
It is becoming increasingly obvious that we have a need for change here at Crosstown High.
Students and parents have repeatedly threatened to leave the school because they don't feel

 confident that they're getting the learning experience necessary for success. We have explicitly
expressed our concerns, so the question remains: how do we move forward?
We as students are willing to work with the school to improve our learning experience, in fact we
demand to have a voice in any future changes made. We have several proposed solutions,
which constitute our list of demands.
a. Two non-voting student representative positions (one male, one female) on the board of
trustees. These students would be democratically elected by the student body and the
only requirements for these positions are that the students must be upperclassman (a
member of any grade, excluding freshman) and must maintain a GPA of 3.5 or higher.
b. A group of students (whose names are listed below) who will work with administrators to
create solutions to the problems we have listed above, until an official student
government election can be held.
c. A promise from the leadership at Crosstown High, that from now forward student voice
will no longer be ignored. Once student government (and the student representatives on
the board) are elected, those positions have to mean something. As a school that
preaches about valuing student voice, we want a guarantee that the school will work with
students to ensure that we have a significant influence on the current and future
experience at Crosstown High.
We are giving a month from today’s date, or until October 20th, for these demands to be
implemented and for the students at Crosstown High to see evidence of change. If the school
continues to ignore our concerns, the collective student body will organize a strike. If no
students show up to school, the school can't run. We refuse to continue to attend a school that
hypocritically ignores the fundamental principles that it was founded on and continues to falsely
advertise.

Temporary Student Advocacy Committee
Students proposed for the temporary committee willing to work with administration to come up
with solutions for the school:
Sasha Glass-Broom
Lydia Grace
Sadie Grant
Sara Grisanti
Harper Kolehmainen
Leo Martinez
Jayna West