Students decide how to spend $25K in Saratoga participatory budgeting |
On Board Online • May 18, 2026
By Rick Karlin
Special Correspondent
When students return to Saratoga Springs High School in September, they can expect some new lunch menu options in their cafeteria, including freshly grilled chicken, beef and vegetables.
That's because students, in a schoolwide vote, chose the installation of a cafeteria grill as the best option for spending a pot of money set aside by the school board.
It's called participatory budgeting. It's been used in some municipalities and other local governments for years, but is a rarity in K-12 public education.
In participatory budgeting, a governing body reserves budgeted funds for a purpose to be identified by members of the community served.
Joseph Greco, director of personnel development for Saratoga schools, became intrigued by the approach after learning that it had been used in schools in Phoenix, Arizona.
"I was looking for an opportunity to re-engage with students by teaching them about how school budgets and capital projects work," Greco explained in an email.
He brought the idea to the board of education at the end of the last school year. Board members agreed to allocate $25,000 for a participatory budget project at the high school. (The district's 2025-26 budget is approximately $159.4 million.)
"We came up with a simple, two-question survey," recalled Erin Bell, the chemistry teacher who advised students on the project. In December, students were asked if they had $25,000 to spend, what they would spend it on to improve the school. They also were asked if they were interested in participating in the project.
Almost all the school's nearly 2,000 students responded to the survey with spending ideas.
Ultimately, Bell said, a core group of about two dozen students planned a voting process. For weeks, they met during the day in their flex periods and after school on Tuesdays (when there is a late bus for students doing extracurricular activities).
"I thought it was a really cool idea to get students involved," said Makenna Dicaprio, a senior who helped put the survey and vote together.
The students used artificial intelligence. They loaded survey results into Microsoft's Copilot AI system to identify most popular themes and ideas.
One of the top ideas was adding a sound or public address system to a turf area behind the school. Then students learned that the school board had a prior agreement with people who lived near the area to keep noise down, and that idea fell off the table.
Dicaprio said she and other students on the project took that bit of political realism in stride. "Rejection is redirection," she said.
Another student suggestion called for better privacy panels in the restrooms or a water fountain on the outdoor turf area. There also were calls for a bocce court and outdoor dispensers for students to fill their water bottles.
But the clearest trend in student suggestions involved providing healthier food options in the cafeteria.
To craft a realistic ballot question on a way to spend money to achieve that goal, students met with Eric Bush, the district's director of school lunches.
During a tour of the kitchen, students learned that one of three large kettles was unused. Someone asked if it could be replaced with a grill. Wouldn't that enable Bush to expand offerings to include freshly cooked meat or veggies? He agreed that such a grill could be used to supplement the existing system in which meals are preprepared and heated up.
The next step was to hold a vote in which all high school students could choose from a menu of spending options. The ballot included an outdoor water source for the turf field, a grill for the cafeteria, improved feminine product dispensers in the bathrooms, privacy upgrades in the bathrooms and bocce courts.
How to poll the student body? An online poll would be easy, but the students went in another direction. With help from teachers, they obtained voting machines from the county board of elections. Two polling machines were set up in an auditorium, and students used them during a two-day voting period in March.
Students voted in social studies classes. If they missed class, they could send in absentee ballots.
An official from the county Board of Elections came to show the students how to vote - a matter of filling out a secret paper ballot, scanning it into the machine and turning it in to a student poll watcher.
Students also were given "I voted" stickers like those that adult voters received during the November elections.
"We made it as real as possible," said Mia Khazin, one of the students who helped set up the vote.
Voter turnout was more than 90 percent.
Students who helped to organize the vote said it gave them the opportunity to interact with adults as peers working toward a common goal, rather than in the ordinary teacher-student context. They got some real-life lessons in limitations when it came to ruling out some of the improvement ideas, such as when they learned the school board had a noise abatement agreement that ruled out a loudspeaker system.
Participatory budgeting requires a commitment by the school board, Greco noted. He said some municipalities have embarked on participatory budget programs, but then struggled to raise money after a vote, so it's important to secure the funding up front.
School officials said the project was designed to be aligned with the state Board of Regents "Portrait of a Graduate" initiative, which aims to ensure all high school graduates are "Academically Prepared; Creative Innovators; Critical Thinkers; Effective Communicators; Global Citizens; and Reflective & Future Focused."
Greco said giving students autonomy to make meaningful decisions about their school environment through participatory budgeting is one way to address the goals identified by the Regents.
"We can't expect our graduates to be real-world problem solvers if we don't give them real world problems to solve," he said.