Mass Student Walk-Out In New York City Protests Over School COVID-19 Safety Policies

Hundreds of students across New York City walked out of their schools Tuesday in a show of defiance over COVID-19 safety protocols in classrooms. At least 600 kids left Brooklyn Technical High School, the city’s largest, before noon despite the cold weather.

The students walked out of the educational facility in the biting cold to protest the lacking COVID-19 safety policies in their school amid the spread of the Omicron variant, New York Daily News reported. The students expressed concerns over "an unsafe and chaotic environment at their school" despite rising infections, the report said.

In a series of social media posts, Instagram account @nycstudentwalkout2022 called on NYC students to participate in the Tuesday protest. The said account has more than 3,700 followers and one post, which called for a walkout at 11.52 a.m. Tuesday, gained over 16,000 likes. “Participating in the walkout is showing solidarity with our city’s parents and educators,” one post on the account reads.

Local newspaper journalist Sarah Belle Lin spoke with some students at the Bronx High School of Science who participated in the protest. Lin said the participating students are demanding “an option to go remote,” adding that there were also students from Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan who joined the citywide protest.

The exact number of protesting students is unclear, but participation was reportedly high at the Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, and the 6,000-student Brooklyn Tech, the report said.

Sources told New York Post that teachers and administrators told participating students their participation will not be considered as unexcused absences, while other school administrators did not sanction the protest.

A junior at Brooklyn Tech told the outlet that students “don’t feel safe at school" and that "there are so many cases going around and we think more should be done.” Danny Mui, a sophomore at the school, said that “half the students aren’t there” in his classes as some have contracted the virus while others are “afraid of COVID.” Mui said that “the school just isn’t doing anything about it.”

New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks said the district understands students’ concern “during this crisis and wholeheartedly supports civic engagement among New York City students,” WABC reported. Banks also urged student leaders who participated during the protest “to discuss their concerns and ideas” with him, adding that the district has “doubled in-school testing” as part of the efforts to prevent transmissions.

Data from NYC Health revealed that the daily average of new confirmed COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, positivity rate, and probable cases in the city have been increasing over the last seven days. The city has logged more than 1.6 million confirmed coronavirus cases since the pandemic started.