Andrea Cardona, the new personera for 2020-2021 of The Columbus School, has various plans for some necessary changes in our school community. 

Now that she has won the elections, Cardona plans to start working right away. She is already scheduling meetings with the school’s administration, Andrés Rendon and Maria Teresa to discuss the process of materializing her proposals.

“I will start by helping the school’s administration make a positive transition from virtual school to ‘alternancia’ school, ensuring that people are comfortable and safe at the same time,” Andrea Cardona, personera for the year 2020-2021, said.

That is only one of the ideas that she wants to implement in the school. Cardona also plans to extend the amount of programs students can participate in to complete their service hours. Additionally, she’d like the  school to inform high school students more about the universities in Medellín and not only those abroad. 

“We are not well informed about them, even though I personally want to study abroad I think that since we live in Medellín, most people want to stay and I don’t think the school gives us enough opportunities to get to know the universities here,” Cardona said.

Cardona’s dream of contributing to the improvement of the school is something that she has desired for a long time. When she was in 4th grade and witnessed her first school personero elections, she knew she wanted to show her ideas to the school community.

“I believed that it would be amazing to be personera, because I’m someone who likes to change things for the better,” Cardona said.

Her campaign is represented by a plane ticket, which portrays where her ideas come from. Making the school more open-minded is one of her main goals. After visiting 47 countries and doing a year abroad in Switzerland at an international school, she was opened to many different cultures.

“Most of my ideas come from the places I’ve visited because I’ve been able to see how every culture is different and I want to implement the best of every world into The Columbus School,” Cardona said.

A lot of this process depends on the current situation with Covid-19, which is why Cardona made sure that what she has planned is possible in virtual school.

“When I was doing my video on the proposals I asked the three different principles from elementary, middle, and high and they all approved my ideas, so I do believe that they are doable,” Cardona said.

As previous personeros have done, Cardona will work with the other candidates, Nicolas Creus and Juan Jose Londoño. She finds some of their proposals really interesting, such as Halloween, new clubs, and car privilege related plans. 

“We want to work together to make the school a better place as we all have really good ideas,” Cardona said.