Santa Fe school board supports students and staff in March 14 walkout against gun violence.

Students also ask district to advocate for gun control

The Santa Fe school board voted 4-1 Tuesday to approve a resolution supporting student and staff participation in a planned national walkout March 14 to protest gun violence in schools.

The board also voted unanimously to direct Superintendent Veronica García to find somewhere between $250,000 and $300,000 to install doors with automatic locks on all district classrooms and administrative offices.

The board action followed nearly an hour of often emotional testimony from both public school and private school students about security and their fear of being killed in school. This came two weeks after a gunman killed 17 people and wounded almost as many in a high school in Florida.

“We shouldn’t have to worry about a place where we spend 40 hours a week that we may die there,” said student Eliyah Bacon, who fought back tears as she spoke to the board.

Other students echoed that thought. “The bottom line is, I’m scared,” said Santa Fe High School student Connor Woods. “Help us. Help us feel safe.”

Many students asked board members to advocate for them at the local, state and federal level to do more to ensure gun control laws are passed.

Frank Montaño, a former city councilor and former school board member, gave perhaps the most impassioned speech. Turning to the roughly 30 students in attendance, his voice rising in anger, he said, “You people have a powerful young voice. Rest assured your voice is as powerful as the five people who sit on this board.”

He asked the board to let the students “run with” the planned March 14 demonstration.

The Women’s March Youth Empower movement has asked school districts around the country to join in a 17-minute demonstration — one minute for each person killed in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The incident, one of many school shootings in the U.S. in the first two months of 2018, rallied students across the U.S. to demand that political leaders take action on gun safety.

Some school board members worried that by approving the demonstration resolution, introduced by member Steven Carrillo, they would be stepping on the superintendent’s authority. But she assured them that was not the case. Carrillo said the resolution does not direct the district to do anything but let students and staff members know that if they want to talk part in the walkout, “We’re behind them.”

Board President Lorraine Price voted against that resolution because, she said, she did not want the action to be “co-opted by adults.

“They don’t need our permission to walk out,” Price said of the students. “It’s outrageous for us to tell them what time to demonstrate and where.”