Principals punish students with one-day suspension, campus
clean-up or after-school forum
Morgan Hill – Students who staged a walkout through Morgan Hill Monday were offered three options to mitigate their behavior, but one of those options was an opportunity to learn more about the subject of their protest.
The majority chose to attend an educational forum on Thursday in which Ann Sobrato High School teachers Irma Mendez and Fawn Myers explained how legislation is drafted and the various provisions contained in the controversial congressional bills dealing with immigration reform.
Live Oak and Sobrato high school students objecting to the bills wanted to make their voices heard and left the campus for several hours Monday, mirroring walkouts at other schools in the Bay Area and protests nationwide.
Principals at the schools sent a letter home with the students letting them know what they would have to do to make up for Monday’s missed day of school. They would either be suspended for one day, participate in the Thursday after-school forum, or pick up trash.
“I’ve been working with the leadership of the students that walked out to find constructive ways to deal with this,” Sobrato Principal Rich Knapp said Thursday. “They’ve come up with some really great ideas. The students have gone into the classrooms, sharing information.”
Knapp said history classes held discussions on the subject during the week, and on Friday, students organized a peaceful, informational protest after school, sanctioned by Knapp. The students walked around the campus holding picket signs.
“The punishment was not for the protest, but for breaking closed campus,” Knapp said. “If a student doesn’t check out in the office, doesn’t have parent permission and leaves the campus, then they are given either a one-day suspension or the opportunity to pick up trash. We added the third option in this instance because we saw this as a teachable moment.
“We also wanted to give them an idea of how they could have a voice in the process, what kinds of constructive things they could do,” Knapp said.
Thursday’s forum was only open to parents and students, Knapp said, to protect the students.
“This is just for our school community, not for activists,” Knapp said. “We want to use this (forum) to help our students, to give them an opportunity to get unbiased information. Then they will be prepared to make informed decisions.”
Of the 55 students who walked off the Sobrato campus Monday, three chose the one-day suspension, two selected the campus clean-up option, and the rest chose to attend the forum.
Live Oak High was planning similar events for its students, according to Morgan Hill Police School Resource Officer David Ray, who said he would be dividing his time between the schools for Friday’s protest.
Junior Vasquez, a Live Oak High student, attended Tuesday’s school board meeting to tell trustees why he felt the protest was important.
“I’m here to talk about the walkout that occurred yesterday; it had to do with immigrants being deported,” he said. “Many Hispanic students participated in the event. I wanted to say we’re not here to apologize for the march; we’re here to apologize for leaving school. We marched for a good cause; we strongly believe in what we were doing.”
Vasquez told trustees he and the other students who marched intended to do so peacefully.
“We weren’t going to do any harm, weren’t going to do any damage or start a fight with anybody on the street,” he said. “It wasn’t just Mexicans, but a lot of different races. We were just trying to express how angry we were about it.”
