Auburn – Students at St. Peter and Sacred Heart Catholic School are finding out that there’s a lot more to starting a business than just having a great idea.
The school’s 12-member student council began the year thinking about what it could do to make the school better. Plenty of ideas came to mind right away: More “dress down” days, when the students can pay $1 not to wear their uniforms to school, and events such as an orange contest in which students try to wear the most orange in the most creative way for Halloween.
But the student leaders wanted something bigger. Something important and useful. They decided that opening a school store would both provide a service to their classmates and possibly earn the group money to reinvest in other school projects.
Student council members are undertaking a marketing analysis and recently participated in a fact-finding tour to Central Maine Community College’s student store in Auburn and a financial workshop with Community Credit Union representatives at school.
“Once they gave us their questions about what we were going to do, we found out that we weren’t really very far along in opening our store,” said Lee Morin, an eighth-grader. “We hadn’t even thought about who would run the store, when it would be open, how many shifts of workers we would have.”
Marketing survey
After their field trip and workshop, students learned that they needed to find out what their customers wanted.
“At first we just thought that we would have some supplies like pencils and some snacks for kids who forgot theirs,” said six-grader Dayle Jordan. “But then when we saw the college store, we got some other ideas.”
Brady Lare, another six-grade council member, made a list of what he saw in the college store. “They had section dividers, stuff for little kids, greeting cards and clothes. I didn’t even think of clothes.”
The school’s student council is also creating a school mascot and logo as a result of student and parent requests, said Principal Donna Sawyer.
Now the students are thinking that T-shirts with their new mascot would be a popular item. But they won’t know until after their marketing survey. And they won’t know for sure until sales start.
“We still need to answer a lot of questions and work on the details,” said Morin.
The Community Credit Union in Auburn has offered to give the students startup capital for their venture. School custodian Dave Cyr has offered to build the store on his own time. The store will be complete with a storefront, glass shelves, a sales counter and wheels to make it mobile throughout the school, said Sawyer.
One of the primary goals of the council is to give students opportunities to make learning real, said Sawyer. “These kids are finding out what it means to make decisions and to make things happen.”
Students in the new student council are learning Robert’s Rules of Order and how to deal with the barrage of suggestions and complaints from their classmates.
No sporks
Jordan said that the most common request from fellow students is to have forks and spoons in the cafeteria instead of sporks. She added that a salad bar and a school chorus have also been popular suggestions.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said Lare. “We have to learn how to get along and make decisions together.”
Morin said the responsibilities and the role can sometimes be stressful, but he admitted that having a say in his school also makes him feel important.
Sawyer pointed out that the student council and its projects are prime examples of the school’s motto: “We are a place where faith, love, and learning come alive.”
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