Students around the world are planning to participate in a global climate strike on Friday, and the nation鈥檚 largest school district has told students they can skip class鈥攚ithout punishment鈥攖o participate.
New York City schools notified families earlier this week that it would ahead of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York next week.
Climate change is shaping up to be one of the most animating issues for young people. As a growing wave of students continue to demonstrate in large protests around issues such as gun violence and climate change, it does pose challenges for how school districts should handle youth activism that takes kids out of classrooms during the school day.
There鈥檚 no universal approach that school districts are following, similar to what we saw in 2018 when hundreds of thousands of American students . In the case of the walkouts, many administrators were concerned about student safety and urged students to plan in-school activities to express their views.
Many large districts, even some in otherwise politically progressive areas, are not following New York鈥檚 lead. The , for example, will not excuse absences for students participating in the strike, reports the Seattle Times.
is also not excusing absences for the strike, according to the Miami Herald.
Schools in the nation鈥檚 second largest district, Los Angeles Unifed School District, are holding 鈥渨alk-ins鈥� as an alternative to leaving school to participate in a protest.
鈥淥ur goal is to provide students with the opportunity to express themselves at school,鈥� said a LAUSD spokesperson in a statement.
Among the districts that are allowing students to skip class without penalty are (as long as students return to class after the protest), in Oregon, and , according to local media reports.
The climate strike is encouraging young people, as well as adults, to walk out of their classrooms and workplaces to protest the use of fossil fuels and galvanize world leaders to take more aggressive action to address a warming planet. One thousand protests are planned in the United States alone, according to the .
Climate Change Is an Important Issue for Students
Many teenagers consider climate change one of the biggest issues facing their generation.
A quarter of 13 to 17-year olds say they have taken some form of action to address climate change鈥攚hether it was attending a protest, writing to their lawmakers, or participating in a walkout鈥攁ccording to a .
A majority of teens reported feeling afraid, angry, and motivated by climate change. A significant majority, 86 percent, believe climate change is caused by humans, the survey found.
Climate change is nearly as important as gun policy for many teens. Sixty-one percent of teens indicated in the survey that climate change is either very important or extremely important. Sixty-four percent said the same of gun policy and 54 percent ranked immigration as very or extremely important.
The climate protests have been inspired, in part, by 16-year-old Swedish environmentalist Greta Thurnberg. Thurnberg sailed across the Atlantic on an emissions-free boat to draw attention to climate change, arriving in New York Harbor last month.
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Photo: Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, lower center, participates in a Youth Climate Strike outside the United Nations, Friday, Aug. 30, 2019 in New York. Thunberg is scheduled to address the United Nations Climate Action Summit on September 23. --Mary Altaffer/AP