Schools need to punish students who participate in walkouts

April 20th marks the anniversary of Columbine, one of the first school shootings in the United States. It will also be the date of a national school walk out which has been planned after the more recent school shooting in Parkland High School. Students are planning to walk out of class at 10:00 am, and not come back to school for the rest of the school day, although many others are not planning to return until after gun laws are changed. Many school districts are responding to these students by saying they will punish students who participate in the walk out. While this policy has upset many students, the schools are doing the correct thing by punishing students who participate in the walk out.

The main purpose of school is to learn, and that should be the school’s main job, educating their students. Principals and administrators need to be ready to punish students who attempt to take away from a learning environment, as a school walk out would do. The school’s main purpose is not to make political statements or have protests, the goal is to teach students.

This was one of the main reasons the Needville Public Schools in Texas have said they will suspend any student who partakes in a walkout or protest. The superintendent Curtis Rhodes has claimed the main reason for this decision was to prevent disruptions during the school day. Other schools are not announcing what will happen to students partaking in the walkouts, instead saying students will not be excused and will receive punishments based on things such as their handbook. One school system in Wisconsin is following these standards and saying students will receive disciplinary measures because the protests were set up from an outside source, and it is disruptive for the school day. The superintendent Todd Gray has also said students can be called out by parents if they want their children to participate. These schools are doing the right things by making sure that the school day is not being interrupted, therefore completing their main goal.

Every year at the beginning of the year, students are forced to sign a contract acknowledging they received a handbook at the beginning of the year. Students who sign this contract are also saying they understand the school can enforce punishments, such as suspensions, for participating in any actions listed in the handbook. Many of the rules listed in the handout are about safety or distracting oneself or other students from learning. A walk out would fall into the second category, as students would be outside of classes, and therefore not participating in school. There is no reason why a walkout should be treated differently than any other event that distracts from education.

Besides punishing students who participate in the walk out, many other schools are saying they will not mark any walk out participants as present for the day. On attendance one can be marked truant, meaning a student is at school but refusing to go to classes. This is exactly what students who are participating in a walk out should be marked as. Even if they are walking out to protest for social change, they are still on school grounds without being in classes, which is the exact definition of truant. Many teachers have strict schedules and missing class for a protest and missing class due to skipping, while different in morality, result in the same thing – students missing class.

The reason people are required to go to school is to learn, and this learning happens, most times, inside of classes. If students were not being educated, or if education was not a top priority, then there would be no point in school. School exists to teach students, not as a platform to allow students to express political opinions. A school supporting or ignoring the interruption of class time for a political protest is failing in their job of teaching students. Education should always be a top priority of the school and ignoring events that will take away from education is a blatant disregard of the purpose of school.

While schools need to be punishing students who participate in a political protest, that does not necessarily mean that students shouldn’t participate. If a student feels passionately about having more gun regulations and they feel participating in the protest is the right choice for them, then they should participate. However, the school itself, should not allow protests to go unpunished, because they would be disregarding their main purpose of education. If other distractions to an educational environment are not allowed, then a political protest should not be any different. Schools need to enforce already in place truancy regulations and have a system in place to punish students who participate in the protests, because they should not be encouraging or ignoring the disruption of an educational environment.