On Wednesday March 14 at 10:00 a.m. there will be a school walkout. It will last 17 minutes, one minute for every life lost in the Parkland shooting; it’s also a peaceful protest for safer schools. The organization, March For Our Lives, is the group behind organizing the nationwide protest.

Mr. Padgett said “The whole idea of this is to bring attention to how crazy our world has become and to say we need safer schools, but if I was a planer I’d say well why are we leaving school when the whole point is that we want safer schools? But I know the answer to that it’s that a convenient Saturday after noon in a park won’t draw attention.”

Many teachers agree that a peaceful protest is the way to go as long as students aren’t disrupting school.  A North High teacher who wishes to remain anonymous said, “Well yes I think I have to agree with board policy. But it is an act of civil disobedience, the students have a right to be civil disobedient they have that choice and if the feel strongly about it I think they should walk out.”

The official statement in the agenda is “Pupil walkouts, boycotts or any other unauthorized holidays will not be permitted or recognized. Any such activities are in violation of published BOE policy and KSHAA regulations.” So far the BOE has not released a new statement; Mr. Padgett has said “Well we don’t quite know if there will be any punishment worse than a detention because we’re not going to treat this any different than we would a tardy. We can’t make the punishment worse than we usually would just because it’s a protest, it’s important to stay as normal as possible because school will be school. But we can’t just condone it and let you all go without punishment, because we’ll definitely get kids who just want to get out of class and don’t believe in the cause.”

It’s difficult to talk about subjects like this without bringing up gun control and the topic of arming teachers, a North teacher who wishes to remain anonymous has said “This is quite difficult because I’m like half and half sometimes I think yes sometimes I just don’t know. I think if it were the difference between a shooter and one of my students or even myself yes, I would want to be able to protect them and myself.”

Most teachers have said they wouldn’t be comfortable with a gun in their class room. “Well I think arming teachers is one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in the last ten years, and that’s strictly because I know some teachers. We could have armed security guards maybe,” History teacher Ed Morales said.