MAPLEWOOD / SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — A group of middle and high school students from South Orange and Maplewood spoke at the April 23 South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education meeting about school safety and students’ ability to organize protests in response to gun violence. The students told BOE members and district administrators that they have felt teachers and school administrators have not allowed them to organize protests and demonstrations, saying they have been threatened with punishment in recent weeks.
Sarah Wolf, a Columbia High School senior, discussed an incident that had happened at the school in February, when the senior parking lot was graffitied with gun threats. She said the school did not let students know what was going on in the aftermath of that event.
“There was zero transparency and communication with the students regarding what had occurred and what steps were being taken during and after the incident,” Wolf said at the meeting. “Many Columbia students, including myself, were scared and did not feel the administration did an adequate job making students felt secure.”
Wolf also said that she and other students think safety drills at CHS are not treated seriously, and asked that there be a stricter drill protocol put in place for safety.
“Many students feel as though the safety drills are not taken seriously and much of that is due to the low levels of maturity we see from our teachers who disregard the protocol,” she said. “We also recognize that there are many places in our school where there is no protocol. The students of CHS demand that the protocol be updated to protect students and faculty in those areas.”
Olivia Hirsch, a sophomore, said that she and other high school students want to make sure that students are free to organize protests with the support of the administration.
“It is becoming more and more of a thing in our culture for this to happen and we want to make sure everyone is on the same page, so no students fear unlawful punishments,” Hirsch said at the meeting. “As the role of teens protesting increases, the role of teachers needs to be changing as well.”
Prior to an organized protest on April 20, interim Superintendent of Schools Thomas Ficarra sent an April 19 email to the community letting students know that they would not be stopped from participating in walkouts, but that they would be marked absent in any classes they missed.
“SOMSD respects that students have constitutionally protected rights to assemble, speak, and petition the government. At the same time, as a school district, we must hold students accountable for class attendance,” Ficarra wrote. “Students, parents and guardians, please be cognizant that attendance for classes will still count, and any class in which a student is not present due to participation in the protest will be marked as an unexcused absence.”
Hirsch said teachers should go through training to learn how to handle students who want to organize a protest or stand up for a cause they believe in. Getting vague instructions or unclear consequences, she said, creates confusion and fear among students.
“This is why there should be teacher training on the rights of students and what punishments can be legally given out, so no student is ambushed on his or her way to walk out,” Hirsch said, adding that students should not “be ambushed by a vague threat from a teacher.”
All the students who spoke at the meeting referred to the recent walkouts – one at CHS on April 20, and one at each of the district’s middle schools that same day. Hirsch said she had heard accounts from students at both Maplewood and South Orange middle schools who said they would be punished if they participated in a walkout.
“Getting vague instruction when you have organized something is frustrating,” she said. “Myself and many other students would be more than willing to work with the district and have discussions about school safety and transparency that includes an open dialogue between adults and students.”
MMS eighth-grader Phoebe Hill said the middle schools would benefit from better relationships between students and administrators.
“Both middle schools could strive to do better by having protests be mostly student-led and to allow them to be supportive of us without hijacking our causes,” Hill said at the meeting. “As students we deserve to understand our rights for actions that we take. I believe that it is my right to understand the consequences for standing up for a cause I believe is right.”
Hill also read a statement from SOMS eighth-grader Hudson Pollock, who was unable to be at the BOE meeting.
“The SOMS administration has in effect destroyed students’ freedom of speech by becoming involved in the planning of speakers for walkouts and putting students in a position where they could not plan important walkouts,” Pollock’s statement said. “They had no voice. School is a place of learning and social interaction. By constricting our voices we are put in a powerless position in our own community.”
The students had support from the adult community at the meeting as well.
“As somebody who is just a community member, I have heard many student voices express concern to me over the weekend about how walkouts were handled in their classrooms or their school community,” Maplewood resident Shannon Cuttle said at the meeting. “That’s very disheartening. I hope that we can come to some sort of consensus and best practices because, as we know, we are a very active community and our students’ voices are only going to increase.”
Lillian Hawkins, another Maplewood resident, also supported the students who spoke at the BOE meeting.
“I think it’s so exciting, everything that they’re doing,” Hawkins said at the meeting. “I really hope the school system will be able to support them and improve or implement training for staff in handling their students’ rights and their ability to demonstrate.”
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