For years, students in teacher Mark Gorey's AP Language and Composition class have had an assignment called “Champions of Change” in which they create a persuasive argument about something they feel needs changing. Gorey's goal with this assignment is to help his students become informed citizens.

This year, the Boothbay Region High School students were asked to take the assignment a step further, and create iMovies about their proposals. Two student movies were shown at the most recent Community School District School Committee meeting, by Lisa Pawlowski (who attended) and Nick Gorey (who did not).

Pawlowski's movie was about the iPads given to the students, and how just giving them wasn't enough. She suggested that training is needed to help the students understand the technology, and that sometimes students only use them when specifically told to because they don't understand how to use them.

She did a survey of the student body that showed 67 percent of the students use them every day, but 27 percent use them almost never, and 44 percent of the students surveyed felt they were not useful. Apps she has found useful, such as Notability (a note-taking app), get pointed out to students, but they are not told how to use them or why they should.

She also suggested the school could save money and increase iPad usefulness by investing in electronic textbooks. According to BRHS Principal Dan Welch, the school loses money every year in damaged and lost textbooks.

The second movie was by Nick Gorey, who proposed that with the new school schedule of four classes at a time instead of eight, the athletic eligibility policy needs to change.

The policy states that a student can fail one class and still be allowed to participate in extracurricular activities such as sports teams, but if the student failed a second class, they will lose that privilege until their grades improve.

Gorey proposed that the rule be changed so if a student fails one class, they become ineligible.

“The current policy is too lenient, that needs to change,” Gorey said.

He did a survey of students where 45 percent of those surveyed said the policy doesn't encourage students to do better, and only six percent said the policy was too strict.

After the movies, School Committee Chairman Larry Colcord said the school's athletic policy should be looked into since it needed updating. Welch replied that such a review is already in progress.