ABQ High students leave class, protest budget cuts
APS says it was not involved in action
Hundreds of Albuquerque High students walked out of class Monday afternoon to protest recent education budget cuts and push for more funding.
The group of roughly 900 left the school at 2:10 p.m. — 15 minutes before the final bell — and gathered along the edge of the campus, which is near Downtown, chanting and waving signs at cars traveling along Odelia Road.
“Without education, nothing can happen and there is no future,” said Joey Sedillo, 16. “School is the glue that holds everything.”
An aspiring engineer and architect, Sedillo said he worries about program cuts, old textbooks and exhausted teachers — all because schools aren’t getting enough money from the state.
The freshman carried a white posterboard with a drawing of Frankenstein alongside the message “Cuts Bad! Support Our Kids!”
Other signs cast blame on Albuquerque Public Schools, the New Mexico Public Education Department and even Pearson, the company that developed the controversial PARCC test.
Hannah Fry, 17, said she demonstrated to show support for teachers, who may have to contend with larger classes next year.
In April, APS outlined a number of cost-saving options to deal with a projected $26 million budget cut, including a new class size waiver and reduced employee work days. Two unpopular proposals — a heavier high school schedule and the end of all middle school sports — were dropped last week.
“Well-funded public education is a right,” Fry said. “We’re the future leaders, and we deserve education.”
Word of the protest began to spread around the school last week, Fry said, but it’s unclear exactly who was behind it.
AlbuCORE, a caucus within the Albuquerque Teachers Federation, alerted the news media Friday, though press agent David Wilson stressed that the union was not the organizer. School staff stood outside the building during the protest but were not visible in the crowd of students.
Wison told the Journal that Albuquerque High students and teachers collaborated on the demonstration, which was scheduled to coincide with May Day, a labor rights movement that staged events across the country.
He emailed a statement from the organizers that said the protest was meant to show “frustration, anxiety, and anger at a political system that places a higher value on the interests of bankers and political careers than those of our students or our livelihoods.”
“It appears that politicians of all stripes, at all levels, prefer to use APS employees and their students as pawns in their quest to accrue ever greater political capital,” it said.
In an emailed statement, PED spokeswoman Amy Hasenberg accused the district of “spreading false information as a way to distract from the fact that they tried cutting middle school sports.”
“We hope the superintendent will tell her million-dollar PR machine to stop creating facts and focus on our kids,” Hasenberg said.
But APS spokeswoman Johanna King said administrators had nothing to do with the rally and would not condone a demonstration during school time.
Albuquerque High principal Tim McCorkle said he only heard about the protest Monday morning from a teacher who had seen it advertised on Facebook and was concerned about its cutting into classes.
In March, Santa Fe Public Schools tangled with PED over a budget demonstration by students and teachers held at the Roundhouse on a school day.