“Where Learning is for Life.” RBHS’s current mission statement’s life is coming to an end. For nearly five years now, this slogan represented what was thought to be what RBHS is about. However, the Teacher’s Executive Council, a group of nearly 10 teachers from around RBHS, thought it was the best time to change.
“We are revisiting the mission, vision and common commitments for the faculty because of a growing issue of some teachers not fully embracing some of the programs and goals of RBHS,” Randy Smith, a member of the Executive Council and a US history teacher said. “We’ve also had a 60 percent turnover of faculty members since the current versions were made in 2010.  With so many  transitional changes to become a 9-12 building and the changes to personnel, we saw a need to reassess our cultural values and refocus our community goals.”
In an effort to bring in multiple voices into the developing future slogan of RBHS, the Executive Council asked for a group of students, mainly from Student Council and from the RBHS journalism class, to assist them with getting more student input with the new slogan.

“There are mostly seniors and junior,s but there [are] one or two sophomores, and I am the only Freshman right now, but we hope to expand that,” freshman Cassi Viox, a member of the chosen group of students, said. “I have been attending meetings weekly on Thursday mornings to help get an idea as to where we want to take this entire process. We get together and discuss where we think we should take RBHS next and where we think RBHS should be going.”
This group of students were tasked with creating a short video that was shown in all Bruin Blocks on April 2. The goal of this video was to get students to start brainstorming what they believe RBHS is about.
“I’ve dubbed [the group] the Student Visionary Council, but that’s still a work-in-progress.  After several brainstorming sessions, these students crafted the questions and collected representatives of the student body to provide answers,” Swift said. “I think the students liked the video; most were watching and demonstrated interest in taking the subsequent survey.”
The subsequent survey was created by the Executive Council and was made in order to get student input on what they believe RBHS stands for and why it exists. However, after receiving merely 550 responses out of the expected 1800,  Swift said it ran into some technical difficulties and they were forced to shut it down.
“Currently, our goal is to have the mission statement crafted and selected by the middle of May.  We are still delving into our cultural values and we need time to process the ideas in the student survey,” Swift said. “After we look at the perspectives of all stakeholders, the faculty will hold a contest to craft and select the future RB mission statement.”
By Abdul-Rahman Abdul-Kafi