Pennsbury High School students will join thousands of their peers across America in a school day walkout on Friday to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tactics playing out nationally.
“As a district, we recognize and support the rights of our students to peacefully assemble,” read the undated letter sent to Pennsbury High School families signed by district Superintendent Thomas A. Smith and high school Principal Reggie Meadows.
No students will be forced to participate and those that do take part in the 20-minute event will not face any disciplinary measures, the letter added.
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MAGA influencer Scott Presler has been posting all over social media, trying to enflame outrage over the peaceful student rally. Journalist Jennifer Cohn, in a profile of Presler for the Bucks County Beacon, highlighted Presler’s murky past. Presler, who founded the right-wing organization Early Vote Action, previously worked at ACT for America, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls an “anti-Muslim hate group.” At the time Presler described it as “living my dream job.” Politico also noted that Presler “previously worked with and reported to the RNC as a Republican Party of Virginia operative until the party suddenly cut ties in August 2016. According to three people familiar with the circumstances, Presler engaged in sexual activity inside a Virginia Beach office the RNC shared with the state party — and posted explicit pictures of the encounter on Craigslist.”
Mother Jones also reports that Presler is a “QAnon conspiracy promoter.”
“This is a student-centered event, and we ask that parents and community members not visit the school grounds during the walkout,” school officials said in their letter.
Pennsbury High School has about 2,925 students; while the Pennsbury School District has a population of about 9,454 students. It serves families in Yardley and Tullytown boroughs; and Falls and Lower Makefield townships.
Education Week reported on February 5 student classroom walkouts, staged during educational time nationwide, are a free speech right and that school responses to these protests “must be viewed as neutral.”
READ: Central Bucks Community Grapples with the Specter of ICE Raids at Local Schools
In the letter sent to Pennsbury High School families and signed by Smith and Meadows, the district alerted families to the walkout, requested they not visit the school campus during the walkout and noted Falls Township police officers would be on hand to provide “an added level of security.”
NBC Miami reported February 6 hundreds of students walked out in protest of ICE, gathering on a football field and chanting “anti-ICE slogans.”
Closer to home, students in high schools in Montgomery and Delaware counties have occurred so far in February, where ABC News reported students at North Penn High School had staged a walkout on February 6; while a similar scene played out at Phoenixville Area High School in Chester County.
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There have been no reports of student ICE walkout protests in Bucks County before Pennsbury High School’s planned protest Friday.
The U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment (signed 1791) guarantees the rights to free speech, peaceable assembly, a free press, freedom of religion, and an avenue to petition the government “for a redress of grievances.”
Cyril Mychalejko contributed reporting to this article.
