The Palo Alto High School administration is preparing for a student walkout at noon on Friday in protest of actions taken nationally by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
According to an email from principal Brent Kline to all Paly families, administrators and campus staff will ensure safety during the walkout, while teachers will continue instructional time in their classrooms.
“Administrators and campus staff will be present in common areas to support student safety,” Kline stated in the Thursday email. “Staff will remain on duty and focused on teaching and supervision.”
Additionally, the email contained information about California Senate Bill 955, which authorizes middle and high school students to have one excused absence per school year to participate in a civic or political event.
“We also want to share that California law (SB 955) allows students one excused absence per year for participation in a civic or political event, such as a permitted protest, when advance notice is provided to the school.” Kline said.
Organizer and activist junior Brian Miller informed the administration of the walkout in which students will walk to the Paly side of El Camino to protest.
“He [principal Brent Kline] was appreciative that I let him know [about the walkout],” Miller said. “He didn’t promote or deny it.”
The Paly administration did not respond to The Paly Voice’s request for further comment.
Miller says that he is organizing this protest because he feels that students are a core part of the changemaking process.
“I was thinking, why aren’t we doing something [to protest ICE] here?” Miller said. “Why are we waiting for people all around us to make change?”
An Instagram post by Miller raising awareness about the walkout currently has around 680 likes and 460 shares.
The Instagram post’s design was created by junior Leilani Chen, who says she plans to attend the walkout despite it taking up 20 minutes of 6th period.
“It’s not so much [time] that it will completely obstruct the period,” Chen said. “It’s important to let people in our community know that the actions of ICE are not something we’re willing to stand for.”
Sarah Hernandez • Jan 30, 2026 at 7:48 am
It’s a public school sponsoring this. I don’t see how this is legal.
First it’s one time, then two. Faculty gets away with enough already in CA.
Courtney Mitchell • Jan 30, 2026 at 11:18 pm
If you didn’t read the article, you really should. If you read it, you really should re-read it.
a.) There is no “public school sponsoring this.” It’s organized by students.
b.) You “don’t see how this is legal,” yet the article explained specifically, exactly, what California legislation made this legal. One time per year.
c.) You say “First it’s one time, then it’s two.” Don’t presume students will presume to want to do this on school time again. Maybe they will, and maybe they’ll do it after school next month or next week because they’re too young to be hypocrites, & they naturally want to set a good example when protesting an illegitimate regime which has violated court orders and ignored established legal procedures on so, so many occasions. If that’s even what they’re protesting. None of us but them knows what it’s like to approach adulthood at such a scary time in our national history, when, at just a quarter of a millennium, our nation discovers that our presumption that the separation of powers is enough to protect us from the deliberate, cynical tyranny of the corporatocratic elite, figureheaded by one of the most venal bad examples in our long national journey, all enabled, opinioned into existence by a free press freed of the responsibility to always speak the truth.
d.) The “faculty gets away with” only what elected school boards allow. Elected by a majority of our fellow citizens. We decided, 250 years ago, all the way to today, to live by our ever-evolving collective sense of what the best way to live together is. As fragile as that is turning out to be. 100 years ago fascism rose it’s evil head once again from the ever-smoldering ashes of a plantation economy made strong by the labor, back-breaking labor, of imported (& bred, like livestock) slaves. Fascism in America in the 2 decades before the 1940s has been mostly edited out of our history books, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t come close to happening, before the Great Depression, before the 2nd Great War which put women in the factories and men in foreign graveyards where some of the current citizens of fascist-occupied countries know more than we do about our soldiers & the battles our boys won to save democracy & freedom in those foreign fields & farms. They know the price we all paid, and how we then voted to help them rebuild their devastated economies. Because fascism can never survive when people have known freedom for so long. These dark days will end, sooner than later, for we will make it end, peacefully.
f.) Because e for effort is generally skipped in grading for the kids of middle and high school which this California legislation recognizes as the coming next generation of adults, the next generation of voters who will, undoubtedly, help make sure these scary times aren’t repeated. F for failing, failing to understand their place in our collective future. We don’t need to fail them any longer, do we?