In response to loosely translated and barely enforced laws in America concerning the ownership and uses of firearms, students in American public schools are planning a seventeen minute walkout on March 14, to recognize the loss of seventeen students in Parkland, Florida to a mass shooting at a school and to protest the current interpretation of the Second Amendment of the Constitution. Well and good; the First Amendment applies to students in public schools, along with everyone else in this country.
Schools have responded to this idea differently. Some schools have allowed it, some schools have discouraged it, and other schools are threatening to impose unconstitutional sanctions to students who exercise their First Amendment rights and walk out for seventeen minutes. A lot of schools are making threats of inappropriate sanctions, seemingly without contacting the attorneys that represent their school boards. Beyond counted the seventeen minutes of missed class time as an unexcused absence for each student who walks out, a school really does not the legal authority to back up their claims of having children arrested for walking down hallways and through doors. Further information can be accessed here, though a list of protocols published by CNN.
Something public schools should recognize, prior to criticizing children for demanding change is that because of our leaders, Trump in particular, advocating the notion teachers should carry loaded weapons to class, children feel even less safe in school than they did before the last mass shooting at a school. In Kansas, schools actually began the 2013-2014 school year without insurance because of lax gun laws in Kansas.
