Seventeen minutes for 17 victims.
That was the focus of Pottsgrove High School’s walkout demonstration that took place on Wednesday for National Walkout Day.
The nationwide event, which was meant to protest school gun violence, was held at the one-month anniversary of the school shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14 in which 17 people were shot by a gunman who gained access to the school.
The tragedy has triggered a national response, with students across the nation following in the footsteps of student survivors of the Florida shootings, who have marched in Washington, D.C., and met with President Donald Trump.
The shootings also kicked off a wave of conversations at the local school board level about security, armed guards at school and whether teachers should be armed.
But for the most part, Wednesday was about the walkouts, remembering the victims and agitating for changes in policy to make schools safer.
In addition to Pottsgrove High School, other schools in the area that participated in the walkouts were Phoenixville Area High School, Owen J. Roberts High School, Pottstown High School and Pottstown Middle School.
Other schools, including Boyertown and Spring-Ford high schools held walkouts indoors.
At Pottsgrove High School Wednesday, some 700 high school students opted to leave their classrooms, supervised by faculty, and take part in the demonstration.
At 10 a.m., students poured out of the building, holding signs about gun violence while walking the length of School Lane. Lower Pottsgrove Police were on the scene for security and had School Lane blocked off from 9:45 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. for the demonstration.
“I am extremely humbled by the amount of people who have come out,” said Karli Tellis, one of the students who helped organize the walkout. “I was very discouraged by the reactions we were getting from individual students. They were very negative and it shook my faith a little bit but this has definitely restored it. I’m so proud of all these kids for exercising their rights and doing this. This is amazing.”
“We were not expecting this many students,” added Sara Amer. “Students were saying, ‘Oh it’s going to be too cold’ or ‘I just don’t feel like it.’ Now looking at it, you can see that a lot of students, no matter what we heard, actually stuck through it and are standing up for what they believe.”
Student Ashon Calhoun helped start the demonstration with a poem about gun violence called ‘Silent Shots.’
“A shooting last month, and most people already forgot,” read Calhoun. “And so if no one remembers, they’re just silent shots.”
Calhoun was followed by Tellis who read the names of the schools that have been affected by mass shootings as well as the names of the 17 victims from the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas last month. Tellis reminded Pottsgrove students that the victims of these shootings were no different than the students at Pottsgrove and encouraged her fellow students to make their voices heard by voting and contacting legislators.
“Peter Wang was 15 years old and was in the JROTC program. When the shooting began, he held the door so that others could escape and lost his life because of it,” said Tellis. “Guys, never forget. Never again.”
“When the shooting happened, we talked about it in art class and everybody was crying,” said Pottstown High School junior Emily Hart, who helped to organize her school’s walk-out.
“It was all over social media and people were posting paragraphs on Instagram, saying it could happen at any school,” said sophomore and event co-organizer Mariana Pearson.
After taking their event outside, the high school students were surprised to see a large contingent of Pottstown Middle School students who crossed the campus to join them, marching behind a banner that said simply “enough.”
The high school’s a capella choir quieted the buzz of the students by singing Leonard Cohen’s iconic “Hallelujah.”
“Our job is to teach students citizenship,” said Schools Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez. “I can’t very well be advocating for our students and deny them the ability to do the same thing.”
“As a school community, we are using this day as a teachable moment,” Pottsgrove Superintendent William Shirk said in anticipation of the walk out at the high school there.
“It is never our intent to overturn a student’s view; we do seek to empower all students to formulate their own thoughts and views and have a civil discourse when they disagree with each other,” Shirk said.
At some school districts, the administration disagreed with the idea of students taking their walk-out literally and leaving the school buildings.
“The major concern with students leaving the building is their safety and welfare, because it is national public knowledge that on this day, students may be accessible to anyone who may wish to harm them,” David Krem, interim superintendent at Boyertown Area School District wrote in a letter to parents.
“With this in mind, all administrators agreed that the safest position was to keep students within the building,” Krem wrote.
Those who left the building would be subject to discipline, he warned.
Abigail Slater, 17, was one of a handful of Boyertown students who defied the warning, and was punished for it.
She said about 10 students went outside the building and stayed out for 17 minutes, keeping silent and holding signs about the need for increased security and better mental health screenings.
Slater said school officials urged students to devote their energy to writing legislators about their concerns “but they can just ignore those.”
“I really don’t think an email gets the point across,” said Slater, a junior at Boyertown Area Senior High School.
“A lot of kids don’t stand up for anything because there aren’t a lot of things to stand up for. But this is something we can stand up for and when we show unity, all of us standing up as one, it sends a more powerful message,” said Slater.
She said school officials made the students come back inside after 17 minutes and each received a one-day in-school suspension sentence.
Students at Spring-Ford said administration asked that the walkouts be geared toward remembering the victims rather than politics or policy.
“The best way for us to ensure student safety is to know where our students are during the school day,” Spring-Ford Superintendent David Goodin wrote in an message to the school district.
“We appreciate the fact that these students are working with the administration so that they may conduct this event inside the building in a safe and orderly manner and we respect their request to peacefully assemble,” wrote Goodin.
Erin Crew, manager of communications for the Spring-Ford Area School District, said those high school students who wished to participate gathered in the auditorium. “We did not have students go outside,” she wrote in response to an email inquiry.
In addition to the walkout, students at Spring-Ford also planned an assembly for after school in which they hoped to “inform kids on gun and shooting statistics and laws, and to give them ways to get in touch with lawmakers and congress people.”
Students said they are also trying to arrange a trip, separate from the school, to bus students from local schools to the March for our Lives on March 24.
