Permission slips won’t stop school protests. Parent approval is already required | Opinion

Kansas lawmakers are at it again, sticking their noses into school business unnecessarily and threatening districts across the state with hefty fines if they don’t do what lawmakers want.

And this time, they are asking schools to do something they already do. Make sense? No, it doesn’t. It’s bluster.

On Tuesday, the Kansas Senate passed an amendment to the state budget bill to restrict school protests by requiring students to obtain parental permission before participating. Schools that allow students to walk out of school buildings to protest without permission, or encourage or facilitate a protest, could be fined $100,000 or more a day for each day the protest occurs — money that could be better spent on lessons about civics, civil rights and social justice.

This has school leaders across the state pretty frustrated because “almost all schools in the state already have policies requiring students to have parental consent for a student to leave school” to protest or for any reason, said G.A. Buie, executive director of the United School Administrators of Kansas and the Kansas School Superintendents’ Association.

And, good luck proving a student didn’t have a parent’s permission. School leaders told me that even when they suspect that might be the case, once parents learn about the consequences their child might have to face for breaking the rules, they’ll say, “Yeah I gave them permission.”

Republican lawmakers supporting this measure, which they say is about safety, are not being honest. However, their true motives seem obvious.

Protests and walkouts

This proposed amendment came after state senators representing parts of Johnson County questioned school policy on protests and walkouts, days after a fight broke out during a student-led protest last month at an Olathe high school.

The demonstration was in opposition to the ongoing federal immigration crackdown and the aggressive tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. A corresponding gathering of students supporting ICE led to an altercation between a few students, and four were taken into police custody, because that’s what sometimes happens: students fight — in school classrooms, in the halls, on the campus lawn.

Republican state Sens. Doug Shane of Olathe and Beverly Gossage of Eudora, in a statement after the altercation, called the high school incident a “breakdown of decorum and dialogue. We are concerned that the district administration failed to demonstrate clear leadership to preempt such an event from happening in the first place.”

That sounds to me like they were opposed to students protesting ICE altogether.

Young people have been protesting at schools for years. Last year in Shawnee, dozens of students walked out of school to protest against gun violence. Two years ago, hundreds of Kansas students walked out in protest of racial injustice against a fellow student.

When I heard about this amendment, I wondered why lawmakers weren’t calling for schools to restrict protests then. Why now?

Buie has a theory: “It’s because they are not walking out for a reason that legislators feel is appropriate. It is in direct disagreement with some legislators,” he said.

Students have their own minds

I agree with his assessment. Students, Buie said, are smart. “They have their own mind, their own thoughts and their own way of expressing that. Kids come up with their own opinions about how to participate in our government.”

Neither teachers nor principals are organizing student protests or encouraging students to participate in them, Buie said. These protests, he said, are student-led, and most of them know they need parental permission to participate.

Schools have consequences for students who don’t follow those rules, including in-school suspensions. Penalties vary from school to school.

As a parent of two sons, I have always supported my young men having freedom of expression, even if what they believed was not exactly what I believed. I wanted them to listen to varying perspectives but also to use their words, knowledge, and creativity to defend their beliefs, which in my house we call having conviction.

I’ll bet most parents want their children to have the right to express themselves without anyone, especially politicians, attempting to muzzle them or direct what they can say and what they can not. Buie said that most of the time, parents do give permission, verbally or in writing, for their child to participate in protests.

Not only do they most often say yes, but they show up, Buie said. “I’ve seen a lot of these protests, and most of the time the parents are right across the street watching.”

This story was originally published March 6, 2026 at 10:53 AM.