The cry from the classrooms

This could be the start of the #MeToo movement for gun control.

Teenagers across the country still reeling from last week’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., skipped class en masse Wednesday to deliver a stinging rebuke to federal and state lawmakers reluctant to impose new restrictions on guns. From Tallahassee, Fla., to Washington, D.C., the students vowed to be the catalyst for a cultural change in the way Americans think about guns.

“This is just a start. I feel like our school isn’t going to stop until there’s change. ... It could’ve been us,” said Reanna Locke, a sophomore at West Boca Raton Community High School in Boca Raton, Fla. “I shouldn’t have to be afraid to go to school. … I shouldn’t feel like I’m in class and one of my classmates is going to pull out a gun and shoot me.”

Locke and hundreds of her schoolmates marched out of class and walked 10 miles to Stoneman Douglas, where 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz killed 17 students and teachers one week ago. It took them three hours. The students chanted “MSD strong!” and carried signs that voiced their frustration over what they see as an imbalance in priorities: “My life is more important than your guns.”

In Tallahassee, about 100 students who survived the shooting in Parkland rallied at the state Capitol and met with lawmakers to demand a ban on assault-style rifles like the AR-15 used in the Parkland shooting. On Tuesday, state lawmakers voted not to consider such a ban, a measure filed at the beginning of the legislative session, long before last week’s shooting.

Anxious not to appear deaf to the students’ pleas, Florida lawmakers are working on a legislative package to address some of the loopholes that facilitated Cruz’s rampage. The restrictions under consideration include creating a waiting period for purchasing any type of firearm, increasing the minimum age for gun purchases to 21, banning bump stocks that allow semi-automatic guns to fire with machine-gun rapidity, and creating gun-violence restraining orders.

Florida lawmakers also will debate boosting spending on school-based mental health programs and giving police the authority to detain someone considered a danger to themselves or others. A more controversial proposal includes deputizing teachers or administrators so that they can legally carry firearms on campus.

But with just a few weeks left in this year’s legislative session, some of those good intentions are bound to fall through the procedural and political cracks. Republican strategist Rick Wilson said he understood the students’ need to be heard, but “the thought that you get to wave a wand and change the law is something that is probably going to collide with reality.”

The students are well aware of the political realities at work against them, especially their state’s strong support for guns. And they seem to understand this won’t be a long-weekend lobbying effort.

“We’re going to talk to these politicians tomorrow. We’re going to talk to them the day after that. We’re going to keep talking, we’re going to keep pushing until something is done because people are dying and this can’t happen anymore,” Alfonso Calderon, a 16-year-old junior from Stoneman Douglas, told students from Tallahassee who greeted the Parkland convoy when it arrived Tuesday night.

Change often takes time, and these students might have to wait longer than they think to see lawmakers united over such a divisive issue, maybe even until they’re the ones holding office and funding political campaigns. But once in a while culture changes rapidly and unexpectedly, leaving people to wonder how something so intractable suddenly moved, like a dam breaking.

Just ask movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, untouchable for years until the #MeToo movement swept him away.

Desegregation vs. education

Educators in Connecticut are learning a valuable lesson about unintended consequences. Sadly, students from underperforming schools in Hartford are the ones paying the price. Seven African-American and Hispanic families sued state and local officials last week over racial quotas that have kept their students out of popular magnet schools.

Under the terms of a state school desegregation case ruling, the magnet schools are limited to 75 percent minority enrollment. But only 11 percent of Hartford’s students are white, leaving hundreds of seats in the 21 magnet schools unfilled—with a waiting list 3,600 students long. State officials tried last year to raise the magnet schools’ minority cap to 80 percent, which would have opened about 1,200 more seats to minority students. A state judge rejected that request because it would contribute to segregation.

But parents whose students are trapped in underperforming schools are more concerned about their children’s education than the school’s racial makeup. “This case is about my children’s future, and my children’s rights, but it’s also important for all students of all races,” said Lashawn Robinson, a mother of five and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “Their race should not be a disadvantage to their ability to receive a quality education.” —L.J.

Hope for bullied students

Florida lawmakers are considering expanding the state’s popular school voucher program to any student subjected to bullying in his or her local public school. If passed, the bill would give students about $6,800 a year to attend the private school of their choice, regardless of the family’s income. Dubbed the “Hope Scholarship,” the program would be the first of its kind in the nation. Lawmakers plan to fund the scholarships with a vehicle registration fee auto buyers would voluntarily direct to the program. Even though it won’t divert any funding already set aside for public schools, teachers unions are opposing the measure, calling it just another attempt to undermine state education. Other critics note such a plan might remove a bullied student from a terrible situation while doing nothing to correct the bully’s behavior. —L.J.

Fighting Ivy League favoritism

Students and alumni from 12 Ivy League colleges are asking school administrators to reconsider “legacy” policies that give admissions preference to applicants with alumni parents. Representatives from campus groups for first-generation students signed the letter, noting legacy policies unfairly exclude too many applicants like them from the nation’s elite universities. They want all applicants considered on equal footing, based on their own merit. The letter is addressed to leaders at Harvard, Brown, Yale, and all other Ivy League schools except Dartmouth College, which does not have an on-campus first-generation student group. —L.J.

‘Why would they change math?!’

We’re super excited at my house about the Incredibles 2 movie coming out this summer. The original offered enough silliness to keep my daughter entertained and enough clever “adult” quips to keep the grown-ups happy. It looks like Disney-Pixar has continued that winning formula with the much-anticipated follow-up. The trailer (see below), which fans of the Winter Olympics might have seen during NBC’s coverage of the games from South Korea last week, offers a laugh line for all parents who have struggled with the “new” (aka Common Core) way they’re teaching math these days. —L.J.