By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – A small band of teenagers has a chance to do what adults have spent years talking about: rejuvenate Lewiston High School.

“There’s no school spirit. There aren’t a lot of classes that people would like to take here. It’s not career-oriented,” said 17-year-old Tameesha Blackwell, one of eight students in Lewiston High School’s new Student Voice in School Redesign course. “There are a lot of things that need to be changed in this school.”

The course, established in February with a $1,000 grant from the Lewiston Education Fund, charged a small group of students with coming up with ways to improve the 1,300-student school.

The chosen teenagers, a mix of special education, honors and average students, each gave up a study hall or other class to join the 9 a.m. redesign course.

“I was like, I would do that. I wouldn’t mind changing the school,'” said 17-year-old Kafia Ibrahim, a junior.

For three months, the class researched innovative schools in California and New York. They toured Portland High School, which offered a similar course and is working on its own redesign, and talked with guest speakers about the future facing new high school graduates.

On Wednesday, the teens finished a 22-question survey that will be given to nearly every student next week. It asks them how proud they are to attend Lewiston High School, how well the school has prepared them for college and a career, and whether they would like to change the school schedule.

Redesign class members say the course and next week’s survey are the first steps in turning Lewiston High School into a better place.

“There are so many things I want to change. The periods, the days, the time of it,” said 15-year-old Carter Handy, son of School Committee Chairman James Handy.

Others are already advocating for less homework, longer school days and more courses or larger class sizes so students aren’t shut out of popular classes.

Laura Laverdiere, a 17-year-old junior, believes school spirit is the biggest problem in Lewiston. She thinks the school needs to better reward good academics.

She wants top students to be allowed to skip finals.

“I think it gives kids a motivation to work hard to get an “A” in the class, so they don’t have to take a final,” she said.

Some of the early suggestions have already caught the attention of school leaders.

“We as administrators really got a wake-up call from some of the kids,” said Principal Patrick O’Neill, who helped establish the class.

O’Neill is looking at reducing study halls and creating comfortable seating areas for students to gather. He expects to receive even more ideas after the survey is distributed to students next week.

“Let’s listen to the people impacted most. Let’s listen to the kids,” O’Neill said.

A Bates College professor will help the redesign class tally the survey results. The students will present some preliminary findings to the School Committee.

Because summer vacation begins in four weeks and it will take longer than that to completely delve into 1,200 surveys, O’Neill plans to offer the course again in the fall. He hopes, he said, to keep students at the forefront of Lewiston’s redesign.

Most of the eight teens said Wednesday they’d jump at the chance to keep going.

“It’s not finished,” said Ibrahim. “It’s to be continued.'”