For 1,400 high school and junior high students in Los Banos, February begun with a protest.
About 400 students walked out on Feb. 3, according to a phone interview with Los Banos Unified School District Interim Superintendent Sean Richey in a response to recent events involving U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE).
On Feb. 6, he estimated another 900 to 1,000 walked out. The second day ended with the Los Banos Police declaring unlawful assembly.
Richey confirmed that the majority of Feb. 3 protestors were from Los Banos High School (LBHS). With Feb. 6 students being from Creekside Junior High, Pacheco High School (PHS) and a small group from LBHS.
Los Banos Police Commander Justin Melden confirmed that they watched over the protests with drones. He estimated that out of the 1,400 that walked out, roughly 700 made it to the protest sites.
LBHS students made the half-mile walk to Pacheco Park south of Los Banos Elementary on the first day. Creekside Students made the two-mile walk to Pacheco Park, and PHS students made the two-and-a-third-mile walk to Pacheco Park.
Melden confirmed that a group of students moved north from the park and walked to city hall, before returning south to the park.
Both days, students used the street-facing side of Pacheco Park and the Pacheco Boulevard Seventh Street bridge to protest along the busiest road in the city.
On the second day, Melden said, “after a large physical altercation occurred [involving several protestors], [the Officers’] attention was drawn toward an altercation that was occurring on Pacheco Boulevard involving several students entering the roadway, throwing bottles at a motorist.
“And after officers observed that unlawful behavior, coupled with the physical altercation. The protest was declared an unlawful assembly and was broken up by law enforcement at about 2:30.”
“The February third event was peaceful. It remained peaceful. It remained focused on their protests. What happened with [Feb. 6] was much different,” Melden said. Melden reported that the motorist was driving a truck with a Trump flag that students grabbed down.
On social media, parents asked how school site security could allow these walkouts to happen. Richey explained, “We tell them, hey, you need to stay here, you need to stay on campus. But if a student wants to leave and they decide they’re going to leave off campus short of placing hands on them, there’s not a whole lot we can do.”
He continued, “nor do we really want to because that would make this a situation far more volatile than it would need to be and would place both the school staff and the student in far greater danger of harm.”
The police presence on Feb. 3 was minimal. With drones and unmarked police cars being used to monitor the protest, according to Melden. Feb. 6 started the same but following the physical altercation, a “large police presence” was brought in.
On both days, Richey confirmed that he only had knowledge of walkout rumors hours before they happened. Walkout flyers for the first day were shared between students through private social media channels, according to one junior high student who wished to remain anonymous. The Instagram account, Los Banos Trending, posted a walkout flyer for PHS on Wednesday.
“Our responsibility is to let their families know, and also if we feel like there’s a danger to them, contact local authorities. We’re not going to go and hunt the student down and force them into a bus or something to come back to campus. You know, we can’t do that against the kids’ will,” Richey said of the district’s responsibility in this situation, highlighting that the district cannot protect students once they are off campus.
In response to how disapproving parents may get rid of the unexcused absence from the walkout, Richey said, “If a student decided to leave campus without their parents’ permission, without the school’s permission, it’d be pretty hard to turn that into an excused absence.”
Richey said, “What is going on in terms of immigration enforcement and specifically what’s going on in Minnesota is something that’s causing a lot of angst for many families across the country. Students have strong feelings about it, just like anyone else, and so they have a right to protest.”
“But we still feel strongly that the safest place for students to be during the school day is at school. We encourage our parents and our community to talk with their students about the potential ramifications of them leaving campus without permission and place themselves in a position where, you know, they are not under the supervision of an adult, and something could happen.”
Richey explained that back in 2017, he was the principal of Riverbank High School. Following the Parkland shootings, students wanted to have a walkout protest, but he worked with them to have an assembly instead. Where they talked about school safety, gun laws and for 13 minutes, there was a montage of everyone who had lost their lives in school shootings up to that point.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever sat in a gym with almost a thousand teenagers sitting in complete silence for 13 minutes. It doesn’t usually happen,” Richey said.
This would be one of his preferred alternatives to a walkout protest. “The Constitution supports the First Amendment rights for a peaceful protest, but when events begin to spiral out of control, it places not only the protesters but the public at extreme danger. Consider, while exercising your First Amendment, the importance of being respectful of everyone,” Melden said.
