Who do you think is really powerful? I will tell you: students and parents. When either group gets organized, they have real power. Consider the parents who opted out in New York: they made Governor Cuomo beat a fast retreat. No one knows how to stop them. No one can stop them.
And now there are the high school students in Boston. They organized a protest against massive budget cuts. They planned meticulously. And thousands of students walked out, ready with signs of protest. The students are fighting for what they need and deserve: a well-resourced education. This should be their right. They should have to fight for it. But they are fighting, and their voices are powerful.
Hours before more than 3,500 of their peers would march out of their classrooms toward Boston Common, a small group of high schoolers was glued to a group chat on their phones. It was 3 a.m., and they needed to make sure everything was ready for the district-wide protest they’d spent the past week organizing.
Were the posters finished? Yes. Was the meeting place finalized? Yes. Did they all promise that, no matter what, they would leave their classrooms at 11:30 a.m.?
Duh.
“There’s this stereotype that young kids don’t know what we’re doing and should let adults handle things because it’s their fight more than ours,” said Jahi Spaloss, a senior at Boston Green Academy. “But we’re the ones in school. This fight is ours.”
Elected officials were sure that adults were behind the protest. Wrong. The students organized it and carried it out. It was their idea.
The notion of a walk-out was hatched on Feb. 27, when three sophomores at Snowden International High School attended a leadership conference at Harvard University and felt inspired after they learned about successful college protests against racism and sexism.
“We knew that all the schools in the district would be impacted by the budget cuts,” said Jailyn Lopez, a sophomore at Snowden who helped organize the protest. “We knew at our school that we might lose foreign language programs and teachers we liked. We decided to do something about it.”
Their first step was writing a letter explaining the budget cuts, which they posted to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram on Feb. 29. In the letter, they warned: “Your school will have less extra-curricular activities, if any at all. If students are engaged in school, there would be less cracks for our youth to even look towards violence. We have lost too many young lives already.”
The students used social media to communicate, plan and reach other students.
Over the weekend, the district sent out a series of robocalls and texts to inform parents that students would be marked absent if they walked out of class. But that only increased the students’ determination.
“It gave us more motivation,” Lopez said. “This was something we organized and we felt like people were trying to discourage us from standing up for what we believed in. And after all the calls, we felt like even more people knew about it and wanted to stand up for their schools too….”
At 11:30 Monday morning, the mobilization began.
Students from grades 6 through 12 stood up and walked out of their classrooms, chanting: “They say cut back, we say fight back,” and “What do we want? Education!”
In the end, more than 3,600 students flooded the streets, a number that amazed even the organizers themselves.
Afterward, Mayor Walsh said he’d like to find out who organized the protest and hoped the adults behind it “start to feed the young students in our city with accurate information.”
The mayor’s office tried to mollify the students by saying that there would not be $50 million, as first reported, but only $30 million.
A student leader responded.
But [Brian] Foster said the students don’t feel as if that’s true—which is why they decided to take a stand.
“It’s kind of like they’re saying, ‘Don’t worry it’s not $50 million, it’s $30 million,’” he said. “That doesn’t answer anything. Even if it’s a $1 deficit, it’s the idea that you’re taking away from students’ futures.”
Students said this was not a one-time event. If the city goes through with cuts, they will be back on the streets again.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Funny how charter school students can take off of school to protest budget cuts and the powers that be say nothing but they do not do the same for public school students. I guess this doesn’t follow the top down model of the No Excuses schools.
Diane, a small typo in that first paragraph perhaps? I’m guessing you meant to write that the students should not have to fight for a well-resourced education.
There’s some key paragraphs that show these young people understand the “zero-sum game” that goes one when a school district expands and has fund privately-managed charter schools … if charter schools gain money, that means public schools must lose money.
It also references how some people thought the anti-charter groups were accused of putting the protestors up to this:
—————-
“Some students also left the protest to testify, which is why some people criticized anti-charter groups as influencing them. But student organizers said the issues are interrelated.
“An early document released by Boston Public Schools said the decline in state aid for education ‘is in part because the public charter tuition reimbursements required by law are being increasingly under-funded.’ The document said this disparity translated into a $18.6 million shortfall in 2016.
“In a speech the day after the protest, Mayor Walsh called the state’s reimbursement system ‘broken.’ But he also told The Globe that, though other city departments are suffering because of the lack of reimbursements, the school budget is not because his administration makes education a top priority.
“But Foster said the students don’t feel as if that’s true—which is why they decided to take a stand.
“ ‘It’s kind of like they’re saying,
“Don’t worry it’s not $50 million, it’s $30 million,’”
he said. ‘That doesn’t answer anything. Even if it’s a $1 deficit, it’s the idea that you’re taking away from students’ futures.’ ”
” ‘Even if it’s a $1 deficit, it’s the idea that you’re taking away from students’ futures.’”
They did a great job. It’s a little easier in eastern urban areas, though. Geography. If our students did this they would have to take a 4 hour bus ride to reach anyone in charge of “ed reform”. They already have the support of the school board and superintendent on funding, so picketing local governance wouldn’t make a lot of sense.
Agree that geography matters. Even so, I would home that all of the urban centers that have been shorted could be mobilized. The students did a great job and enough facts in place to make a good case.
School Committees across Mass are voting on resolutions to fund the Foundation Budget review recommendations #FBRC and keep the cap on charters.
Mass Assoc. of School Cmte, and members of the joint cmte on education, and state reps and senators have been active in briefing school cmtes on the subject and FBRC findings so they can make an informed vote.
I’d love to see a rally with a busload of students from every school district in Mass on the Boston Common and in the state house.,
Gov. Baker is pushing hard for charter expansion and House speaker DeLeo loves the idea too. The senate has a subcommittee working on reforms. If the charter industry finds the reforms acceptable they’ll go through with a cap lift. We should protest during debate in the house.or Senate whichever comes first.
The “budget critters” will probably “settle” the issue with their favorite tool,
“future money”.
Mayor Wash: “A “new” levy will commit “future” money, as the remedy to the
protest.”
?If we can bring money forward from the future, where is it now, if it’s in the future?
In order to “grab” it, and bring it foward, it has to be someplace now. How do you
bring it backward in time, from the future to the past? And when you remove it
from the future, what fills the hole its’ removal creates?
Paul discovered he was Peter after all…
These kids are organized and realistic enough to know they are being lied to by the powers that be. That makes them smarter than many adults.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
In Boston, thousands of students, grades 6 – 12 walked out of class and protested to save their community based, democratic public schools and keep the public school teachers they trust and respect. I think if you read this story, you will end up cheering like I did all by myself in my home office. These students show us what it really means to be an American and exercise their 1st Amendment rights.
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Bravo to these Boston students who organized a walk-out in opposition to the proposed cuts to tjeir schools!
And I have to laugh that the Mayor and the District leaders seem to think that there had to be some adults behind this.
No, apparently, this was all the kids’ idea, and good for them!
The students are fighting a battle for democracy and the soul of the nation. When, the education views of Roland Fryer and Steven Levitt, hold sway in Boston, the common good is at risk.
Roland Fryer wants kids who attend Concord-Carlisle to read Shakespeare and kids in the city of Boston to take tests every day.
I know it sounds like a cliche but it isn’t.
Boston is also home of John King’s (first??) no excuse charter.
Google UP Holland to read about a school disciplinary policy premised on a crime fighting theory called Broken Windows. The state Commissioner of Ed approved UP Holland to take over the level 5 school fully informed about their novel disciplinary policy that produced 325 out-of-school suspensions.
Controversial free market economist Steven Levitt described Fryer as like a brother. Fryer was the subject of a Freakonomics post titled, “Fryer and Levitt Go Ghetto”.
Levitt described fellow University of Chicago economist, Austan Goolsbee as a good friend. Goolsbee was one of the 4 signers of a recent letter criticizing Sanders’ economic plan. Like the other 3 signers, Goolsbee only identified his university affiliation, not his business activities. Goolsbee is on the Lumina board, which was referenced in the Chronicle of Higher Education article, “The Gates Effect- why many in academe are not sending thank you notes.”
A parents, students, teachers and community member group picketed the Mayor’s State of the City address on January 18. Inside Symphony Hall, Marty Walsh claimed education was his priority.
We knew he had about $44m-$50m budget gap he had no intention of closing with funds, and asked how he could give $100s of million but not close the gap with funding. Boston is a high-need high wealth school district. It is the best urban school district in the US, if we can keep it.
On February vacation week, students, parents and teachers protested again outside city hall. They tried to hand deliver a letter to the Mayor but were refused at his door. He was in. In the letter, they made their argument about the effects of the cuts on their school Boston Community Leadership Academy (BCLA) and invited him to visit. One of the teachers on the chopping block was a third year ELA teacher who did BPS teacher residency and got her undergrad degree from Yale.
The protest group marched up to Beacon Hill and entered the state house.Ther were speeches in the meeting hall and a group of students went tot he governors office hoping to speak with him. He refused.
Raise the charter cap lobby effort in Mass has an $18 million dark-money budget, that’s more than the Republican governor’s RGA0funded SuperPAC spent getting him elected, The money is purportedly from Wall Street hedge fund financiers.
The Mayor, who accused his opponent of rapid charter expansion, has now whispered then denied he’d like to close 20-30 Boston schools then presumably open them later as charters. Parents with kids in Boston Public School now call him One Term Marty to his face.