WASHINGTON -- Students at Phelps High School are protesting the school's looming budget cuts and what they view as a "lack of support" from their principal.
They're holding school walk-outs, sit-ins, and marches, carrying signs that read "Fund our future" and "We deserve better."
The mayor's initial proposal for school funding has Phelps losing roughly 5% of the money it received that last year, which could result in staffing cuts and the possible elimination of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Program, explained Ward 5's Representative on the D.C. Board of Education Zachary Parker.
"I'm part of JRTC, so I didn't want to get JRTC taken away from me," Kelly Bonilla, a freshman at Phelps, said. "So it was a really big problem."
They're "trying to take away the trades and programs that help develop the students," Rochelle Corbie, a parent of a Phelps student said.
According to Corbie, the students have a wide list of concerns. Some of them are:
- Keeping the JROTC program
- Students believe the principal should be paneled, not appointed
- The leader must support diversity in the school system
- Keeping Career and Technical Education courses
- Following a tier disciplinary system
- Fixing the cultural imbalance at the school
Parker said the financial problem at Phelps is emblematic of a citywide issue.
"We have a finite amount of money that is allocated to our schools and there are just simply too many schools in the District, and we're having to cut that finite amount of money into smaller and smaller portions every year," Parker said.
Students said they plan to keep fighting for their education with more walk-outs likely to take place in the coming weeks.
"It's always a very powerful thing when our students are involved in raising their voice to speak to what they need," Parker said. "And we all should listen more to our students."
