Newly elected Community Council President, Rafael Castro is passionately committed to the Hackley community. His platform is centered around student advocacy, community engagement, and school spirit. Rafa is eager to make a meaningful impact throughout the school year.
Rafa came to Hackley in kindergarten and has always sought to make a meaningful impact on the hilltop. He got involved in the Community Council in 5th grade and has since been a member of the council every year since then, not including 7th grade due to COVID-19.
“I like the community, I like doing stuff for other people, I like people coming to me and talking about it, it’s something that kinda became part of my identity,” he said.
Rafa said that being a part of the Community Council is very important to him. For him, the people make the place, and the people at Hackley are exceptional. Seeing the presidents before him was very motivating. EJ Regalado, Steven Li, and Daniel Cai were the past 3 Community Council presidents whom Rafa looked towards as inspiring role models.
Since this is his last year at Hackley, Rafa intends to make this year one to remember. He wants to leave the community better than it was when he became president. He plans to do so by helping the community come together while ensuring every student has a voice and feels like they can speak up.
One of Rafa’s strengths as President is how approachable students find him.
“Usually people are pretty familiar with me, and just go up to me and say what they’re feeling,” he said.
Rafa notes what students tell him and brings it up in Community Council meetings, to Andy King, Director of Upper School, or Christopher Arnold, Assistant Director of the Upper School. He said that this is one of his favorite things about being the Community Council President. If someone comes to him with a concern, he feels like he has an obligation and is committed to helping that person with whatever they need.
Over the past couple of years, Hackley has been working on completing the Center for Creative Arts and Technology, which is scheduled to open on Oct 15, 2024. Once the new building opens, all school meetings will be moved there. These meetings have been on Zoom for the past couple of years, so the transition from online to in-person is something Rafa is looking forward to.
“I’m excited about having the all-school assemblies in the new building and not over Zoom. It will make them a lot more fun,” he said.
Earlier this year, Rafa addressed the student body during Convocation. During his speech, he emphasized the importance of the Hackley community and encouraged students to embrace challenges, learn from one another, and make the most of the opportunities provided by their school environment to grow as individuals and build lasting connections.
Being a leader and the face of the student community comes with many responsibilities.
Rafa stated that one of the biggest challenges that he has faced is “remembering that now I’m the leader of the organization, my actions set an example for everyone else.”
Since Rafa is focused on making sure the students have a voice and a say, he takes everyone’s opinions into account, especially consulting other council members before making decisions.
Another challenge Rafa has faced during his time on council is responsiveness from students. He said that sending Google Forms to the students to fill out aims to gather feedback, but it never successfully works.
“Forms wouldn’t work well because people would always just ignore it, the best way is talking to the student body itself,” said Rafa.
In Rafa’s experience, talking to students is the best way to understand how they feel. He has found that this helps him understand the explanation behind people’s opinions. “I try and talk to everyone and go outside of my friend group, talking to other grades as well,” he said.
Even though each grade has its representative, Rafa feels like as Community Council President, his job is to communicate with every student, not only his grade like he did last year as President of just the juniors.
Rafa mentioned that he incorporates information he gains from students throughout the week into the weekly Community Council meetings. Where everyone on the Community Council: the freshman, sophomore, and junior representatives as well can hear. He says their motto is “process-focused but goal-oriented,” which means “focusing on the action with a goal in mind.”
Rafa said that being a part of the community council for so long has “been awesome, changing my perspective on Hackley, the community, and the school itself. For leadership, managing meetings, and organizing things allowed me to see other people’s strengths and weaknesses, and how I can use that to build off each other,” he said.
He said that this helps him in his everyday life. He is better at building relationships, and being a leader, and has learned important organizational skills.
It is always hard to balance school work, council, and social life, but Rafa believes he can do so because of the time management skills that he has developed through his time on council.
“Knowing what is important and what is not,” he says, is the key to his successes on council and beyond.
He said that for him, focusing on two main things and doing them well is much more effective than not being able to do as good a job on a bunch of things.
“I always wanted to be remembered as having a positive impact on other people, and I want to put my best foot forward,” he said.
According to Ben Iaderosa, a junior member of the Community Council, “Rafa does a great job at organizing the meetings and ensuring the meetings are organized. Also making sure people are on task during the meetings.”
Ben said that the Community Council meetings are very productive due to Rafa. He also says that Rafa works very hard to see that everyone has a voice, by mentioning what people have told him in meetings. Ben said that Rafa has reached out to the Hackley Parents Association about funding and other goals that the Community Council wants to accomplish. Rafa is very adamant about making his goals a reality.
