The Student Government Association here at Charter put all hands-on deck to provide Pines Charter with the most awaited week of the year. A combination of Spirit Week, Pep Rally, Homecoming Game, and Homecoming— all taking place in the span of six days.
What a lot of students don’t know is that these events took hours upon hours of planning, revising, and executing. Here we give you a behind-the-scenes of what takes place behind SGA’s closed doors when preparing these events for the PPCHS Jaguars.
When I walked into the SGA classroom on the fourth day of school, I awaited the moment committees would be assigned. This would be the day that everyone in the SGA class would be presented with the event they would be in charge of planning.
Now in my head, I knew exactly what event I wanted to be part of— and that was homecoming. As the slide titled “Committees” came on full display in front of the classroom, I scanned for my name, and in bold letters, I found it underneath: Homecoming. To my ultimate surprise and pleasure, I would be working alongside Junior Giana Marte as Co-committee head of this event.
The Homecoming date was revealed and October 5th, 2024 was immediately marked on our calendars. We had exactly 51 days to plan a whole dance for 550 people. A quite intimidating thought, but an exciting one as well. We voted on our theme and Enchanted Forest was without a doubt the winner.
Every single day during first period, the SGA homecoming committee gathered at a table to brainstorm the visions we had for this event. Pinterest boards were created and shared with the rest of the team. Video clips and pictures of enchanted forest backgrounds, flowers, mushrooms, butterflies, cakes, wooden trees, and centerpieces were added to our vision board on a daily basis.
We would grab our SGA passes and walk down to the ROG as a group to take a video of the whole area to decide the layout of the whole event. As well as meeting with the CEO and founder of the venue we would work alongside with. We would choose where to put the food tables, the DJ, the dance floor, the backdrop, the photo ops, and the seats. From here we would create a rough draft on paper and then create a digital version of the final layout.
Next came the list of all the possible foods we would be serving on the day of the party. Numerous options such as chicken, fries, pizza, and pastries were added as possibilities. Then the desserts started off as mud cups, a chocolate fountain, cotton candy, cupcakes, and cookies. Ultimately choosing cupcakes and designing special Enchanted Forest sugar cookies as the sweet treat!
For the main food, Giana and I spent hours after school multiple times a week calling different businesses to see which would give us the best offer to cater to hundreds of people. Ultimately, after countless emails, phone calls, and city approvals, we were able to cater Chick-fil-A as our final food of the night!
Soon enough our committee put together a presentation that went over every single detail that would go along with the visions we had for homecoming. We included food, centerpieces, layout, photo ops, job distributions, and every piece of information that needed to be included. We prepared it in a specific way so that when we presented it to the rest of the SGA class, they would also have the exact vision we had in our minds.
When planning an event like this, it’s vital to remember that if something changes or doesn’t work out, we have to be ready to adapt and move forward with a new plan. So when planning an event outside in Florida, we always knew the possibility of weather getting in the way of our plans. We consistently checked the weather app and what we feared would happen, happened. A 40% chance of rain in Pembroke Pines on Saturday, October 5th glowed from my phone screen.
The final decision to make a complete transition from outside to inside was taken due to weather precautions. It was time for Giana and I to meet with the CEO of the venue again, only this time to coordinate plans for inside the cafeteria. After the meeting, the final layout changes were put in place, and working quickly and diligently, we were able to come into school at 9:15 in the morning with a brand-new presentation to give the class.
For the next eight hours, we would be working that Saturday to get the decorations prepared, the lights hung up, the centerpieces pieced together, the photo ops built, and the whole production running smoothly in order to be set for 7:00 pm that evening.
After leaving at 5:00 pm to get myself ready for homecoming, my brain and heart rushed with excitement to see the final product of the hard work and dedication put in throughout the day. As I stepped out the car door and made my way through the walkway of lights, I was transported into the exact vision we had set for this event.
The green and purple lights surrounded me, glowing intently. The tree we built stood proud in the middle of the wall, as the projector we designed decorated both sides with the glowing letters spelling out Enchanted Forest and Homecoming 2024. Junior Co-committee head Giana Marte proudly exclaims, “I felt a mixture of intense gratification and pure happiness to see that all our work paid off!”
At that moment, we were left absolutely astounded by the final result. We realized every single call, email, and meeting we had to have in the course of those 51 days was all worth it!
A special thanks and congratulations to the 2024-2025 SGA class, our incredible advisor Mrs. Altimore, the PTA, and administration who made every single one of these events possible for the Pines Charter Student body. We hope everyone enjoyed these events as much as we enjoyed planning it. Go Jags!
