ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Hundreds of Pinellas County students stepped out of the classroom and into leadership roles this week.

The district’s annual student leadership summit brought students from schools across the county together at USF St. Pete for hands-on workshops designed to build confidence, communication skills and student advocacy.

Superintendent Kevin Hendrick kicked off the summit.

“When I began as superintendent four years ago, I had a lot of community meetings, and normally you see adults at those,” Hendrick said. “At one of those meetings there was a student who was a journalist in one of our journalism programs and she said to me, ‘do you ever think about doing this with kids?’”

That’s where he says the summits were born. 

The summit hosted middle school students with activities focused on listening, learning and leading, like one where students had to work together to build a parachute.

“We were building a parachute, you put some coins, or some type of metal in it to bring it down and the slower it is, the more chance that we’ll win,” said Kennedy Culbreth.

Student Leadership Summit Day 3 was a fantastic success! 🎉 Hosted by PATHE, our middle school leaders spent the day strengthening their leadership skills, collaborating with peers, and using their creativity to design meaningful change for their schools. 👏 #PCSProud pic.twitter.com/s04yMERkGn

— Pinellas County Schools (@my_pcs) March 4, 2026

Culbreth, a student at Mangrove Bay Middle School, admits the parachute challenge wasn’t easy, but said working with her peers and sharing her ideas to improve her school with the superintendent meant a lot.

“That’s amazing, so he can hear from different perspectives, not just adults, he also listens to kids,” she said.

There are summits for elementary, middle and high school students, each with activities for their age levels. Hendrick said since starting the student summits and implementing some of their ideas, such as field trips, there have been measurable, positive changes.

“We have five years of student survey data that’s shown this idea of making school more fun and more attractive and more collaborative,” Hendrick said. “Where they’re (students) talking to one another…it’s producing better results for them and it shows in their academics as well.”