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River ASB students organize walkout in protest of districtwide budget cuts
River ASB students organize walkout in protest of districtwide budget cuts
Superintendent Snell attends in hopes of facilitating a dialogue
Superintendent Snell attends in hopes of facilitating a dialogue
-------- Talan Collins / CR News
March 25, 2024
(CR News) - On Monday afternoon, members of River’s Associated Student Body led over a hundred students to the school’s reader-board alongside 99th Street “in response to budget cuts” that will impact the 2024-25 school year. Wearing red clothing, many students held painted signs with slogans like “Fund Our Future,” “Cutting Budgets is Crushing Dreams,” and “Don’t Let Schools Die.”
(CR News) - On Monday afternoon, members of River’s Associated Student Body led over a hundred students to the school’s reader-board alongside 99th Street “in response to budget cuts” that will impact the 2024-25 school year. Wearing red clothing, many students held painted signs with slogans like “Fund Our Future,” “Cutting Budgets is Crushing Dreams,” and “Don’t Let Schools Die.”
Invited by the protest’s organizers to attend, Dr. Jeff Snell, superintendent of Vancouver Public Schools, observed as students chanted “save our staff!” and “education is a right / this is why we have to fight!” Snell tells CR News he felt he needed “to be out [there] to understand what students are focused on,” appreciating that students “have strong relationships with their staff and they know how hard [staff] work to make a difference.”
Snell believes that “we have a really strong student voice in our district,” which he says he “totally empathize[s]” with. He explains that “the challenge our school board has is that we have tried to sustain our staffing model the last couple of years” through “reserve funds, and then federal pandemic relief dollars,” but now the district does not “have those [resources] anymore.”
Snell says he’s tried to “advocate at the state level, and our [school] board has as well,” to address what he describes as a “significant difference” in “what the state provides versus what we come to expect in our schools.”
Protest organizers Mae Otoupal and Emerson Haney, both of whom are members of ASB and the superintendent’s student advisory, commended Dr. Snell for taking “it upon himself to attend,” which they add was a “big display of his character.”
Otoupal, who, alongside Haney, was able to speak with the superintendent about the budget reductions, says she is “concerned about [the] $5 million dollars of programs and materials” that will be cut. She points out that “sports and arts programs here at River are still developing,” calling the decision “heartbreaking.”
That’s why Otoupal wants “to amplify [student] voices to the state level to actually create change,” which she says does not require students “to be on equity teams, in ASB, or [leadership groups] to contribute or make [that] change” happen.
Such contributions from students, Haney suggests, were as simple as “wearing a red shirt,” inspired by public educators that went on strike for more funding and better pay. She argues that “just knowing that they’re wearing red [reveals] that [students] know about the issue” and are “willing to make a change.” Haney wants her fellow students to know that “[they] have the power. If you want to make the change, make the change.”_____________________________________
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