National Student School Walk-Out

As you have likely seen by now, there is a national event this Wednesday, March 14, 2018, initiated and promoted by the students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, to call attention to school violence.

Because this is a student event, our MS/HS principals and I have discussed our possible role and response. We want to honor and respect what our students may choose to do Wednesday. In other words, we determined that we wouldn’t make it OUR event.  We made a conscious decision to allow this to be a true student event, if our students decide it’s something they want to do.  We cannot endorse or participate in a planned walk out during the school day, since doing so would be in violation of public education law.

What’s our role on Wednesday then? To respect the rights of all students, whether they choose to participate or not. The role of our staff during this time will be to help keep our students safe and supervised. Our administrative team is planning to be at the MS and the HS at 10:00 to support our students, if they choose to participate. We will be stationed throughout the buildings and we have Erie County Sheriff’s officers joining our SRO, Frank Simmeth, at our school buildings.  We will encourage students to demonstrate within our school buildings, especially given that it’s WNY and the weather is supposed to be bad.

We need to concentrate on what we’re doing about the problem of school violence and improving our school safety. You’ll recall my earlier post http://bit.ly/2CRpgA8 about school safety and a community conversation on 3/20 at our BOE meeting on the topic. I may not have all of the answers, but we plan to listen, learn, and collectively make good decisions about what we can do to improve school safety here in Springville. Please join us.

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