Davis School District Violated Their Policy And State Code During March School Walkout

This refers to the walkout that was organized by gun control groups to advocate for gun control in schools (back in the spring of 2018) after the Parkland shooting.

The Davis School District, told principals to inform (not ask) parents that their children would be walking out of schools. The District, Principals and Superintendent Newby decided to tacitly sponsor and provide logistical resources for the obvious political advocacy and disrupt school. They also figured parents weren’t worthy to be consulted on their child’s participation but just do as they were told.

On that day, school administrators and some teachers were also required to attend the protest to “observe” and ‘keep kids safe’. Several teachers also made statements in support of the protest including to students who opposed it and stayed in class.

Besides violating basic ethical standards, they also violated the following:

Utah Code 62A-4a-201(1)(a)&(d)( and 78A-6-503(10) along with the district’s own policy by the definitions in Section 3.2.2 subsections [b] and [c] (School Attendance and Truancy Intervention, Section 5 of the District’s policy manual):

[b] “Unexcused absence”
means an absence charged to a student when the student was not physically present in the assigned class or class period at any of the times attendance checks were made and the student’s absence could not be accounted for by evidence of a valid excuse in accordance with this policy or the school’s attendance procedures

[c] ““Excused absence”
means a student’s absence from school which has been verified by a parent/guardian or school administrator in accordance with school level procedures and is for a reason identified by state law or District policy as valid including:
(i) Illness, which may be either mental or physical;
(ii) a scheduled family event if the parent/guardian submits a written statement at least one school day before the scheduled absence;
(iii) medical appointment;
(iv) family emergency;
(v) death of family member or close friend;
(vi) preapproved extended absences in compliance with Section 3.4; and
(vii) approved school activity.

Although an absence may be identified as “excused”, the student is responsible to make up course work for the days missed in accordance with the school level procedures.

The protest resulted in students not being “physically present in the assigned class”. Thus the only way for the District to allow them to protest is an option in the “Excused absence” subsection which only parents or a school administrator can provide. Obviously parents were never consulted so that’s out. That only leaves official sanction from a “school administrator” and the only criteria they could use would be “approved school activity”.

When I contacted Superintendent Newby months ago, he claimed it the protest wasn’t an approved school activity and “No school personnel authorized students to leave class.” No participating students were marked as truant. So under what authority could Newby et al. provide official notification (the letter) and logistics for the political activism without official sanction (“approved school activity”)?
Answer: None. They just straight-up violated state parental primacy code as well as district attendance/truancy policy and effectively official sanctioned a political protest.

A note: Yes – this happened months ago. There’s lots of stuff I would like to write but don’t have time so sometimes I catch up on a few when I get some time. I doubt many people (if any) read this blog anyway so I use this as a way to document stuff for my own reference and maybe someone will be looking up stuff and be able to find background or resources on an issue. If you’re that someone, hopefully it helped.