Student Walkout In South Austin Calls Attention To School Safety

SOUTH AUSTIN, TX — Nearly 300 Bailey Middle School students in Southwest Austin staged a mass walkout Friday morning in calling for safer campuses in the wake of last week's shooting at a Florida high school.

According to media reports, some of the young protesters carried signs with the names of the victims killed in the Florida attack. Seventeen people lost their lives when a former student mowed down 14 students and three teachers in Florida last week — the latest school shooting that has galvanized students all across the nation in calling for safer schools and stricter gun control.

"Save our schools!" students chanted during the walkout that began at around 10 a.m. The rally was supposedly brief, winding down to some two dozen students just over an hour after it began, the Austin American-Statesman reported.

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Friday's walkout is the latest such demonstration at Austin-area schools this week alone. On Wednesday, some 500 students at several schools staged walkouts in solidarity with the Florida victims. About 100 students at Clint Small Middle School in Southwest Austin walked out at lunchtime, according to reports. A smaller group of about 15 students walked out of class at Vista Ridge High School in Cedar Park, officials at Leander ISD confirmed. The largest mass walkout occurred just outside of Austin in Dripping Springs, where more than 300 students engaged in the display of civil disobedience, according to social media posts and other sources.

“Schools should be a safe place to learn, explore and have dreams,” Ivory Smith, 14, told the Statesman at the Bailey Middle School protest Friday.

The fear of a school shooting happening in Austin took hold in earnest Thursday when a former Akins High School student boarded a bus filled with children while displaying the contents of his backpack while making threats to shoot up the school and sparking an explosion. With the high school in lockdown mode, police later detained the youth, finding a magazine and ammunition in his backpack but no firearm.

On Friday, police identified the student as Ariel Ramirez Navarro, 17.

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