Idaho high school students protest teacher layoffs plan

Article

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) – Hundreds of Idaho high school students walked out of classes on Monday to protest a plan to lay off public school teachers and curtail their rights to collective bargaining.

About 250 students were asked to leave the Capitol in Boise and take their protest signs and chanting outside to avoid disrupting state workers, police said.

The hours-long Boise rally mirrored walkouts and sit-ins by students in other Idaho cities. The protests were apparently organized by students and posted on social networking sites like Facebook.

I was pretty suprised to find this. Students, on their own, protesting against what the states legislator is trying to get passed. Yes, atleast from the article, the highschool students organized this on their own.

The Idaho Education Association, which represents more than 12,000 school teachers, is strongly opposed to the plan. The teachers union said in a statement Monday it "had absolutely no involvement in organizing the protests" by students.

Why are the students against this? Heres what the article says whats in the legislation.

The plan restricts collective bargaining by public school teachers to salaries and benefits, removing from negotiations such provisions as class sizes and teacher workload. It also would lay off more than 750 teachers and require students to complete online courses to graduate.

Im guessing this would mean larger class size, less teacher interaction between individual students, and more stuff the student has to figure out by themselves. Will this affect the education quality of our current students and possibly our future ones?

Apparently, this is the first time students have ever done this, according to the police.

Captain Steve Richardson, regional commander for Idaho State Police, said he was not aware of a similar protest by students in the past.