FORKS — The same as the week before, dozens of Forks High School students staged a walkout Friday to express their unhappiness with how the school is being run.
But unlike the March 25 walkout, Friday’s action was highly organized, explicit in purpose and featured student spokespeople who opened up a line of dialogue with school and district officials as a means to alleviate student grievances.
At 8:20 a.m., between 50 and 70 students left school quietly and organized just outside the building, many of them carrying protest signs.
They remained outside for about two hours while protest organizers, including high school juniors Nina Lau and Julia Johnson, met with school and district officials to explain the purpose behind the walkout and voice their demands.
The officials who attended the student concerns were Quillayute Valley School District Superintendent Frank Walter, high school Principal Steve Quick and Vice Principal Chris Wiseman.
Witnesses present
One of the first student requests before any specific complaints were mentioned was to have community and School Board representatives as witnesses.
That request was met by the appearance of School Board members Paul Headley and Sue Gibbs, as well as Donald Graststrom of the Forks Chamber of Commerce and Phil Kitchel of West End Outreach.
With these witnesses in place and a tape recorder and video camera capturing the scene, students began their conversation with administrators.
“We told them why we were out there, which is that everyone’s concerned about things going on in school,” said Lau.
“We told them we wanted three things — respect, communication and trust — which we felt have been lacking all year.”
One source of animosity brought up by students Friday revolved around an e-mail sent by Quick to his high school staff at 1:52 p.m. the previous Friday — the day of the first walkout.
Students obtained a copy of that e-mail.
“Apparently there is a pretty wide spread [sic] student skip day going on in protest of Mr. Quick and Mr. Wiseman,” said the e-mail written by Quick.
“I would encourage you to praise those students that stayed in school today and reward them as you see fit.
“It may take a while to sort this mess out, but we’ll get there.”
