Erika Edwards made a quick observation as she watched hundreds of students grab and devour sack lunches across the high school commons.
“Turkey,” she said, “tends to go a lot faster than ham.”
A small lesson, perhaps, but one of many absorbed by the 17-year-old Edwards and 22 other Highlands Ranch High School student leaders who orchestrated the 73rd annual National Association of Student Councils conference.
Along with adult volunteers and adviser Rashaan Davis, the kids planned every aspect of an event that brought about 1,300 student delegates to the Douglas County school.
In return, they got a crash course in real-life economics, a glimpse of how to work in the adult business world and a taste of the teamwork required to pull off a conference four years in the making.
And they had to work within a budget of roughly $400,000.
“There’s no real playbook for this,” Davis said Sunday morning, as delegations from across North America — and one from Puerto Rico — filtered into the school.
One key lesson: resources fluctuate.
The economic downturn since the day the school won its bid gave planners a tutorial in scaling back expectations and adapting to the unexpected.
“From 2006 to last year, a lot of vendor sponsorships changed,” said Davis. “What seemed like a lock became ‘if we can,’ or became in-kind contributions instead of cash.”
Kasey Wilson remembers hearing about the opportunity to host the national convention when she was in the eighth grade. Now she’s a Highlands Ranch graduate, watching her hard work play out in a four-day whirlwind of clapping, chanting and teenage energy geared toward advancing leadership skills.
“I don’t know where I’d have been without this conference,” said Wilson, who planned today’s mass excursion to the University of Colorado at Boulder for discussions about going green.
“I’ve grown so much — and now I’m going into college with this knowledge,” she said. “Without this experience, it would have taken me years to be where I am today.”
Edwards, a senior next year who headed food services, dealt with catering companies and the logistics of feeding more than a thousand kids.
She went with flavored water over soda to keep delegates hydrated, explored donating leftover food to homeless shelters and dealt with inevitable hitches along the way.
“It’s all about overcoming,” she said.
Planners like Maggie Siple, 15, learned how to find and use the expertise of others in health services — a key element as many kids had never experienced Colorado’s arid, elevated climate.
“I didn’t have room to mess up,” she said. “I went straight to the district nurses.”
Davis sees the experience rippling through the ranks of student leaders beyond the conference. Of the core planning group, seven have graduated. But 13 more are heading into their senior year and three will be juniors.
“This event wasn’t something where you ask your mom to call someone,” Davis said. “They’ve learned that every day is a battle, and you stick with it.”
Kevin Simpson: 303-954-1739 or ksimpson@denverpost.com
