A “student-led” walkout on Feb. 20 at Olathe Northwest High School to protest immigration enforcement ended in a violent altercation between students and multiple arrests, and the district is refusing to answer questions.
The Sentinel asked Olathe Superintendent Brent Yeager and Olathe Northwest Principal Chris Zuck if the district condoned the walkout and if any action to prevent the walkout was taken. Yeager and Zuck were also asked if district staff participated and if there would be any disciplinary action taken against participants for leaving school grounds during school hours.
As of publication, there has been no response.
The district sent out notices to parents affirming the students’ “right to protest.”
But a note from Yeager noted this was only the latest such walkout.
“As many of you are aware, we have seen several student-organized walkouts at both the middle and high school level over the past couple of weeks related to current events,” Yeager wrote, insisting the walkouts have been “entirely student-led and were not organized, sponsored, or endorsed by our staff, schools, or district.”
Yeager also said, “Staff members do not participate in walkouts but observe from a short distance to help ensure student safety. Our expectation is that students attend school and remain focused on their education; however, when students are absent for any reason, standard attendance procedures apply. While we have seen student-led walkouts at the secondary level, at this point, we are not aware of anything impacting the elementary level.”
Erika Sheets, the chair of the Johnson County chapter of Moms For Liberty, said the district is basically claiming they have no authority to stop the walkouts.
“They have a legal duty of care, and so if the school permits the students to leave the building for a walkout, at what exact moment does the school’s legal duty of care and supervision end?” Sheets said. “Because they’re trying to say, well, they don’t have any responsibility here. That’s essentially what the schools are trying to say, ‘Oh, this wasn’t our thing, and we don’t have any responsibility here for it?’ No, actually, that’s not true.
“During school hours, you do have a legal duty of care and supervision. So, at what point does that end? And if it doesn’t end, then that means you do have responsibility.”
Sheets said there’s a question of how the time the students are out of school is counted.
“Are they counting it as instructional time? Because there is a very specific number of hours of instructional time that must happen every year,” Sheets said. “If so, are they sending to parents the specific curriculum goals and things that they believe were accomplished during this?
“There were minors involved. So did the school verify that every participating minor had a signed liability waiver to attend this event. Who was supervising these minors? You know, if this was lost instructional time, how’s the school going to remediate that? Did the school vet external participants? Do they know if people who weren’t part of the school showed up and were there, and what did they do to protect them?”
Walkout leads to violence
According to KCMB, about 2 p.m. on Feb. 20, officers were called to the area of College Boulevard and South Lone Elm Road, near Olathe Northwest High School, after reports of a fight.
At the time, a juvenile male was taken into custody. Since then, another 17-year-old boy was cited and released, and an 18-year-old girl has been arrested.
The father of one of the boys who was attacked told KSHB that his son was among a group of counter-protestors on the opposite side of the street from the walkout.
The father, Bogdan Zaslavsky, said his son wanted to show support for President Donald Trump.
“He wanted to stand up for his beliefs; he didn’t want it to be one-sided,” Zaslavsky said to KSHB. “Everyone should be able to go home after a protest.”
Zaslavsky said instead his son was attacked by other students who walked across the street and confronted them.
“No one should ever come to you with violence for your opinion or your belief,” Zaslavsky said told KSHB. “These videos that are heartbreaking, that you would never want to ever see your child involved in.”
Zaslavsky said the anti-ICE faction grabbed the flag poles, and his son was forced to flee.
“You see immediately [the protesters] grabbing their flagpoles,” he said. “It’s not one or two or three, it’s a big group. They all came at them. You see them grab the flagpoles away from both the kids. You see my son fighting for his way out… he fights him off, turns around, starts running. There’s two kids hot on him, with another whole group of those kids not too far behind.”
