8:00 A.M. is the time when most CHS students will arrive at school. However, late last November, those CHS students were instead en route to various middle schools in the district. They were somewhere different but also familiar, trying to captivate the class of 2030.
CHS students of all grades travelled to Scarlett, Tappan, Forsythe, Slauson and Clague middle schools in November to educate the class of 2030 about what CHS is all about. The trips were organized by CHS social studies teacher and forum leader Ryan Silvester and Forum Council (FoCo), with preparation including four training sessions for volunteer students in addition to regular FoCo meetings. However, the process wasn’t perfect, with FoCo leaders, including Co-President Piper Cooke, wishing that they had more time to prepare.
“We had an appropriate amount [of time], but in a perfect world, we are training hardcore for middle school outreach and have a really good presenting regimen,” Cooke said.
In order to get to the middle schools, Cooke wanted to emphasize organized carpooling and transportation logistics. In a new addition to middle school outreach, Cooke and others made a spreadsheet to make sure every student was accounted for and assigned transportation.
CHS students presented a slideshow and handed out brochures to all eighth grade advisories in the comprehensive middle schools. The slideshow covered all of the main topics that make CHS different from the “traditional” Ann Arbor high schools which include Skyline, Pioneer and Huron. To explain how CHS students present to middle schoolers, Silvester compared the process to sports broadcasting.
“One is the play-by-play commentator, and the other is the color commentator. The play by play is the guy says, first down and such. The color commentator adds all the facts, all the details, all of the extra information that isn’t what you can see in front of you,” Silvester said. “In those meetings, we try to set the play by play. It’s up to you guys to add the color, because you guys are the students.”
The students were eager to fill in the play-by-play with their own color. Each student brings their own areas of expertise.
“The main slide I focused on talked about the individuality and rigor that can occur at Community because I dual enroll at various places, as well as taking quite a few CRs this semester,” said Lena Bible, a CHS junior. “I think it was really fun because we each had different experiences.”
CHS students were normally assigned to the middle school that they attended, a choice intended to help students speak from personal experience, with some, including Bible, interested in going back to where they attended for the three years prior to making the decision that they were now advocating for.
“I was intrigued to go back to my old middle school Forsythe and see all the teachers that I previously had,” Bible said.
Outreach started in earnest in 2023, with FoCo leadership noticed the disproportionately low numbers of students applying from the comprehensive middle schools. The bulk of students were coming from a narrow set of schools in the Ann Arbor area, something that FoCo of the time wanted to change.
“What we found is, as a school, we had a lot of matriculation from A2Steam and Ann Arbor Open and disproportionately less for the other schools,” Cooke said. “We took it upon ourselves to broaden that scope because we care about our school community, we want everybody to sort of be able to enjoy and build a student body that is diverse, capable and amazing, just like all these students that we visited this past year.”
There were two more information sessions for the eighth graders, on Dec. 7 and 9, held at CHS where they learned more about CHS by getting a firsthand experience inside the school, with upperclassmen and teachers describing the school in an in-depth way to the eighth graders. The lottery window opened on Nov. 18., and it closes on Jan. 6. After this date, anyone who hasn’t applied will not be able to get in, barring approved split enrollment options.
Connect with Community will be on Jan. 29, where the incoming ninth graders will come to CHS and get a better taste of CHS. The day after, the class of 2030 will have to commit to coming to CHS the next year, or opt out and go to another high school.
Many CHS students were encouraged by the engagements that they received from the future class of 2030. Although not every student was interested in coming to CHS, even a small number of students per advisory is a huge achievement. FoCo set out a vision in 2023 that has been largely carried out with success, with application and enrollment numbers from the comprehensive middle schools doubling in the classes of 2028 and 2029.
“I honestly think that the magic in it is the Community students themselves. We had a wonderful team working on middle school outreach, and every single presentation that I watched or saw practice happening or dialogue around was absolutely phenomenal,” Cooke said. “They were knocked out of the park. So it was really just that human person who was so capable and so intelligent, telling you what’s up.”
