New York City high school students walked out in solidarity yesterday afternoon against the city's school closings and budget cuts. They converged with supporters from Occupy Wall Street in Union Square.
Last month, Mayor Bloomberg announced he would close the 33 lowest-performing schools in the city and reopen most of them with new teachers and names. During his administration, classrooms have become overcrowded, and schools have experienced many budget cuts.
Gregg Lundahl, the United Federation of Teachers chapter leader at Washington Irving High School, said Bloomberg made these policies to cheapen public education and lower tax burden.
"We believe that the mayor ought to be shut down, not these schools of hard-working students and teachers," Lundahl said.
The walkout was created by Save Legacy, a student group from Manhattan's Legacy High School that opposes the school's closure by the Department of Education. Students from other high schools are facing closure, including Paul Robeson High School in Brooklyn and Lehman High School in the Bronx, also attended.
"We're saying no more cuts to education and no more closures. We're fighting back, we have a voice and we're here to say no," said Dinae Anderson, a junior from Humanities Preparatory Academy in Manhattan.
"We should have an opportunity to defend our schools and be able to change, not just close it down," she added.
Students, teachers and OWS members spoke to a crowd of over 200 attendees about their experiences and struggles under Bloomberg's education administration, according to Justin Wedes, an OWS leader and education advocate who spoke at the event.
Occupy the Department of Education, the main faction of OWS present at the protest, has been active in education-related issues and has called for an end to school closings and government-controlled schools since Nov. 2011.
"We want to end mayoral control so that principals, teachers, students, parents and community members can have more say in the way their schools are run," Wedes said.
Occupy the DoE plans to protest at the DoE's panel on educational policy at Brooklyn Technical High School next Thursday.
"We will take back the panel from Bloomberg and his education bureaucracy," Wedes said. "We'll take it back to the people."
