When Ayleen Serrano Returning to school after a recent winter break, the 15-year-old returns to a nearly empty hallway, absent classmates, and what she describes as a “lifeless” atmosphere. As the days went by, few of her classmates attended MetWest High School in Oakland, California; Her teachers and classmates have tested positive for Covid-19, or have been exposed and are awaiting testing, or simply fear for their safety.
Serrano and her friends decided that if the school did not take steps to make school safer, such as providing regular tests for all students, they would have to request such measures yourself. Serrano and her classmates Ximena Santana, 15, and Benjamin Rendon, 15, decided to start a petition on Google docs. Maybe they’ll get “some students” to sign it, Rendon said. They did better than that. The petition attracted so much attention, it became a story on the local TV news. Rendon recalls: ‘I watched when they aired, and I felt like’Criticize. ‘”
In Oakland and across the US, millions of students return to classrooms amid a surge in highly contagious disease. Omicron variant. Most schools force face-to-face learning even when record breaking numbers of Covid cases ripping across the country. Chicago Public Schools canceled classes for five days during deadlock with the teachers union before reaching an agreement to restart face-to-face learning. Parents of school-age children fret about not being able to go to work if schools are still closed, but they are also worried about children getting infected in school, especially when their youngest child is still Can’t vaccinate.
Meanwhile, many students feel excluded from the conversation. “I feel like my school has failed,” says 15-year-old Jaiden Briese, a sophomore at Denver Public Schools in Colorado. Since returning to school after winter break, he has been wary of crowded hallways between classes and classmates not carefully wearing masks. (When I spoke to him, Briese had come home from school, recovering from Covid.)
His frustration is shared by his 15-year-old classmate Haven Coleman. A seasoned organizer For climate action, Coleman has been thinking about ways to get the district’s attention as the term begins. As she scrolled through social media, she noticed other student actions began to take place — including a petition that Serrano, Santana, and Rendon start thousands of miles away in Oakland.
Coleman texted Briese. They text other classmates about petition ideas; Before long, rumors had spread to students from another high school in Denver. The next day, a student-led petition demanding safer conditions at Denver Public Schools joined the chorus of similar actions from students in Boston, Chicago, New York City, and Oakland.
“You need to listen to us”
Student protesters who spoke with WIRED described how they reached out to their peers using text messaging and social networking apps to help shape their needs for the district. their chief.
A protest in New York started as a late-night texting. Cruz Warshaw, a 12th grader at Stuyvesant High School, presented the idea to her friends Rifah Saba and Samantha Farrow, also juniors: Do you want to organize a walk to ask the mayor to close the schools?
