Board noncommittal on walkout
Superintendent says students who participate won’t be punished
KINGSTON, N.Y. » Kingston school district students who want to participate in a planned March 14 solidarity walkout to protest gun violence did not get an endorsement from the Board of Education at Wednesday night’s meeting, but the superintendent said participants will not be punished.
School board members said at the meeting that they were pleased students have an interest in voicing their concerns, but the only apparent support for a walkout came after the session adjourned.
“I hope they do walk out,” Trustee James Shaughnessy as he was leaving.
The group Women’s March Youth EMPOWER has called for rolling walkouts from schools at 10 a.m. in each time zone in the U.S. on March 14, with the 17-minute protest representing one minute for each of the students and staff who were shot to death Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
A second walkout is also proposed for April 20, the 19th anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado.
In an event sanctioned by administrators, students walked out of the Kingston school district’s J. Watson Bailey Middle School on Tuesday and held a moment of silence in memory of the Florida shooting victims.
The Onteora Board of Education on Tuesday heard that district students and staff members are considering participating in the March 14 walkout.
During Wednesday’s meeting in Kingston, school district Superintendent Paul Padalino said students who participate in a walkout will not face disciplinary action or retaliation. Following the session, he said discussions would take place Thursday with high school administrators to determine how a walkout can be facilitated.
“We want to make sure ... that they’re doing something
that’s safe,” he said. “From an administrative point of view, dropping 2,000 students out onto the front lawn of Kingston High School at a date and time that is wellpublicized is not necessarily safe on so many levels.”
Each of the eight school board members president at the meeting — one was absent — encouraged students to take a position on important issues, but their comments during the public session did not address whether a walkout should take place.
The request for support for a walkout came from three adults and one student, with several other residents initially signing up to make comments but giving up their time so other people
could speak past their two-minute limit.
Parent Michael D’Arcy showed photographs of the 17 Florida shooting victims when asking for specific support from the board.
“We would like to ask the members of the ... Board of Education to proactively support our students and school administrators,” he said.
D’Arcy also asked the board to “send a letter to all teachers, staff and administrators communicating the Board of Education’s support of the national student walkout ... and convey that participation is completely optional and there shall be no adverse consequences so long as all guidelines are followed.”
D’Arcy’s daughter Scarlett, a Kingston High School junior, said the Parkland shooting left her both numb and empathetic.
“I have felt entirely numb and at the same time furious since the shooting, and I cannot begin to put into words how I feel about any of this,” she said. “But I can say how I feel about [shooting victim] Gina Montalto. She was a member of her school’s color guard ... and I cannot begin to imagine what losing one of my students would be like and I don’t ever want to know. My heart breaks for her, her family and her team, but the sad truth is that this could happen to me, this could happen to my team, this could happen to our school.”