Style magazine follows up on the student walkout.
Excerpt:
About 200 students from Open High School and other city schools walked out April 28 to draw attention to the lack of funding for the school district’s many pressing maintenance needs. Mayor Dwight Jones invited them into City Council chambers for a discussion.
But students say the discussion led to more buck passing. The mayor suggested that students take their complaints to the School Board, which receives its funding from the city.
Another walkout is possible, Open High School senior Levi Bane says. But for now he and fellow senior Isabella Arias are running two Facebook pages to keep the protest going online. One, dubbed Presence RPS, will serve as a place for students to document conditions at schools. The other will collect news about the district.
A couple of days after the walkout, City Council voted 5-4 to reallocate $12.6 million of the $13.6 million slated for the mayor’s Shockoe Bottom redevelopment plan. Of that reallocated money, $3.25 million will go toward schools.
But Jones has said he will veto the changes, a move Arias says proves her point: “It just shows that he cares more about commercial development than school development.”
