Students from Milwaukee-area schools plan walkout to protest gun violence

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MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Students in more than a dozen Milwaukee-area high schools are planning to walk out of class the morning of Friday, Dec. 13.

The walkout is a call for action to state lawmakers to make schools safer.

Tyler Kelly with the Milwaukee chapter of March For Our Lives helped plan the walkouts with other student activists as a response to the shooting incidents in Waukesha and Oshkosh high schools last week.

“Every time we do a walkout we bring attention to problems we know solutions to,” Kelly said. “We’re hoping we’re able to empower the entire community to come out and fight for the safety of children because it’s a cause anyone can get behind.”

Wauwatosa East High School is one of the schools scheduled to participate.

The principal of Lincoln Elementary next door told the school’s families that recess and gym classes will be held inside Friday.

She also said there will be increased police presence at the high school.

Last week, a police officer shot a Waukesha South student who pointed a pellet gun at him.

An Oshkosh officer shot a student who came at him with a knife.

Kelly says the violence has made him and his classmates fearful.

He says hiring more mental health counselors would help.

“I go to Franklin High School. There’s 1,600 students and one social worker and I guarantee you hundreds of students don’t even know the social worker exists,” Kelly said.

In the Waukesha incident, police say a school resource officer was the first to respond.

Other schools that didn’t have one before rushed to add their own.

Kelly’s not sold on SROs as a complete solution.

“They can be helpful, but they also can make students really scared to go to school and make school feel like a prison more than anything else,” he said.

It’s unclear if the high schools are sanctioning the walkouts, although Kelly says he’s gotten approval from each one.

The following schools plan to participate: 

  • Wauwatosa West High School 
  • Wauwatosa East High School
  • Shorewood High School 
  • Whitefish Bay High School
  • Milwaukee High Sschool Of The Arts 
  • Milwaukee School Of Languages 
  • St. Anthony High School
  • Pius XI High School 
  • Cudahy High School 
  • Rufus King High School
  • Harold S Vincent High School
  • Ronald Reagan High School
  • Carmen High School South
  • Escuela Verde
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