Recently, many students from across the DMV area and around the country marched upon the United States Capitol to protest against the United State’s current policies on gun laws and climate change. These were planned months ahead of time by many people in the youth community and called the Walkout for Gun Violence and the Walkout against Climate Change.
On March 14 and March 15, many students left school after first period and took the Metro to DC While the walkouts are essentially events made for the whole country to be involved in, students just walking out of school does not count as an excused absence for the remainder of your classes.
This results in students having to make up excuses, so the absence doesn’t go on their attendance record, and many wishing that the school would just excuse them all together. While most teachers and staff members respect all the efforts that students are putting in for something that is important to them, they cannot condone students leaving the school to protest, when there is no evidence that students even went to protest. If they did this, many students would just end up leaving on the days that there were protests . While many students do actually go and demonstrate, it is not an MCPS-sponsored event. They can not publicly announce that they want students to skip school, even though it might be for the greater good in the eyes of many. Montgomery County has started to consider allowing up to 3 “civic absences” for students where they are allowed to be absent for thee nationwide protests that have occurred. So it is evident that the attendance issues are becoming a problem.
The main point of a walkout is for students is to show that missing school to protest issues that are very important outweighs an excused absence for some of your classes. If the absences were excused, the meaning behind the walkouts would have less of an impact, which would not be beneficial to the people who are truly trying to make a difference and bring change to this country’s current policies.
