Hinsdale District 86 Addresses Planned Student Walk-Out

HINSDALE, IL — On March 14, students from all over the country will participate in a walk-out to protest gun violence. At 10 a.m. across each time zone, participants in the walkout plan to leave their schools for 17 minutes to honor those killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

In Hinsdale, District 86 addressed parents and students in a recent letter about the walk-out. The district said it knows there are students planning on walking out. In the letter, the district said, "As educators, we have been amazed and encouraged by the recent political engagement of high school students in response to the school shooting in Florida. At Hinsdale South/Central, this political engagement has energized students on all sides of the issue that the students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School are raising."

The district said in its letter that high school students possess the right to express one's political views.

"Keeping students safe is our most important responsibility, and preserving the learning environment is
most important after that," the district shared in its letter. "So the question becomes how to respect all students’ right to political expression while keeping them safe and preserving their learning environment."

The district said in its letter that it cannot give permission to students to walk out of school. However, students aren't asking for permission, but they are wondering about discipline if they walk out of class.

"Discipline would be case by case and depend on what happened," the district said in the letter. "Students have approached us and shared their plans to walk out, and we appreciate the dialogue because it allows us to make every effort to keep anyone who participates safe. It is an indication of students’ maturity that they are sharing their plans with us, even if we cannot give permission to do what is being planned and even though we will administer consequences for a walkout in the same way we would for a student having an unexcused absence or partial absence from class."

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