‘Our youth wants change’: More than 400 students walk out across Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake schools in protest of ICE

A week after more than 750 kids walked out of classes across Spokane and Mead, students in Spokane Valley made a similar statement.

Around 400 students at four high schools in the Valley walked out of class on Tuesday to protest President Donald Trump’s aggressive ICE tactics as part of his crackdown on immigration into the U.S. Students at Ridgeline, Central Valley, University and East Valley high schools coordinated the mass protest in which kids chose to forgo classes and lunchtime.

“School doesn’t teach you what to believe in,” said Ridgeline sophomore Armani Bain. “So you have to go out there and show for yourself what it is you stand for, what it is you put up with.”

Around 50 students walked out of East Valley High School on Tuesday.

“My friend had been here for five years, and they took his parents from him,” student Elisha Scamolla said. “We all have friends who are (not white). It’s not OK to deport people. We are taking a stance.”

At Ridgeline, close to 200 kids filed out of school as soon as the bell rang for some students to go to lunch at 11 a.m. They assumed handmade signs and a couple bullhorns and marched off campus to the sidewalk lining Country Vista Drive, chanting anti-ICE slogans at passing cars. Many motorists honked and waved in support. Some shook their heads or made obscene gestures.

Students read speeches addressing the “injustice” of immigration enforcement: families separated after people are detained and deported, people shot or killed by ICE agents and those who died in ICE custody. Students held a moment of silence for those killed, including Minneapolis woman Renee Good, who was shot and killed by an ICE agent earlier this month.

“We have these people who are profiling others and going out and they’re killing U.S. citizens, they’re taking U.S. citizens and they’re also killing immigrants as well,” Bain said. “No one should be subject to that fate.”

The Trump administration has maintained the agent killed Good in self-defense and claimed she was a “domestic terrorist” but has not cited evidence to corroborate that statement.

Trump on Tuesday during a news conference addressed the killing of Good, saying sometimes ICE are “going to make mistakes” when they are “too rough with somebody.”

Student organizers at Ridgeline told their school administrators about the walkout. In a meeting before the event, students said they received some pushback from their administration over their plans. Central Valley School District policy, which covers high schools Ridgeline, Central Valley and University, allows for peaceful student demonstrations so long as they “take place in locations and at times that do not pose safety risks or disrupt classes or other school activities,” wrote district spokesperson Marla Nunberg. University High School had more than 100 kids walk out of class.

“The district’s top priority is ensuring that the school day continues as usual and that all students and staff remain safe,” Nunberg wrote. “Although the district respects students’ rights to express themselves, this walkout is student-organized and not a school-sponsored event.”

A Liberty Lake police officer, school resource officers and school staff were present at the walkout “to ensure student safety,” Nunberg wrote.

Students who missed class were marked absent, Nunberg wrote, though parents could excuse the absence in accordance with the district’s standard attendance policy.

The Ridgeline turnout far exceeded what organizers expected. The kids began to plan on Thursday and spread the word over the weekend, expecting maybe a dozen of their peers to convene.

“We are so happy to see how much this movement has grown in a school where we feel so alone as people who don’t share far-right political policies,” said organizer Maggie Taninchev, a sophomore.

“I think it all shows that we were not as separated as propaganda wants us to believe,” Bain said.

There were a handful of students who gathered across the street from Ridgeline demonstrators in a counterprotest, chanting “I heart ICE” over the din of passing traffic. None wanted to comment when approached by The Spokesman-Review.

The area of East Valley voted overwhelmingly for Trump in the 2024 election, overtaking Kamala Harris by more than 30%. The area being so conservative is why the walkout was so important, said East Valley High School student Sage Liskey, showing the gravity and concern that people are feeling when ICE agents are taking people from their homes and cars, and shooting Good to death.

“I think a lot of people think it’s a joke. I think people think it’s happening ’cause we need it. But ICE agents aren’t showing (that),” Liskey said. “It’s gone too far. We need to stand up. East Valley is small enough that no one would think we would’ve done it. But that needs to be seen.”

Haylee Dennis helped organize the protest at East Valley through posting on social media, she told The Spokesman-Review. She watched others in Spokane Public Schools walk out last week, and felt compelled to follow.

“East Valley is a small community and we wanted our voices to be heard. We want to be seen,” Dennis said. “We need to make a stand. This shows a lot about who we are as people, how we aren’t scared to show our voice.”

East Valley High School Principal Ryan Arnold wrote in a letter to students and staff Tuesday that the walkout was entirely student-led, not endorsed by the school.

He wrote that though many may have “strong feelings” about the demonstration, it’s not his place to take a stance on the issue, nor prevent the protest from happening.

“The reality is schools have limited authority to stop peaceful student expression. As a public school, we must balance student rights with our responsibility to maintain order and protect the rights of others,” Arnold wrote. “While we cannot always prevent a demonstration from occurring, we can and will respond if behavior becomes unsafe or disruptive.”

Students who left class will be given an unexcused absence, per school policy, and their parents will be notified of that absence.

Across Spokane Valley, a larger group of around 70 Central Valley High School students walked out of class at 11 a.m., many holding signs with ICE-related puns. One sign stood out among the students lining the sidewalk: “My mom fought for my future. Now, I’ll fight for hers.”

Josephine Allen, a junior and organizer of the protest, said she wanted to help those at Central Valley High School who want to speak out against ICE find some type of community. Many students feel detached, Allen said, and others feel helpless.

“This says America is angry and our youth wants change. We want to improve the world,” she said. “In my time at CV, I haven’t seen anything like this. And I have talked to teachers who have said nothing like this has happened here, either.”

Central Valley freshman Mack Benson said that his family is Hispanic. ICE’s increased activity is “a big deal,” Benson said.

“In our community, we have immigrants and students who want to come to school and learn,” Benson said, adding those kids should be able to attend class without being afraid their parents will be arrested by immigration agents. “It’s not OK, and I want to make sure we are seen.”

After a little over an hour of rallying off campus at Ridgeline, kids made their way back to school.

“I can still make up the work,” Bain said. “You can’t make up for this if you don’t do it.”

For many, the demonstration was an educational endeavor in and of itself. Ridgeline’s Taninchev said she was compelled to speak out after reading a passage in her school-assigned memoir “Night,” by Elie Wiesel, which tells the author’s account of being imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald. In the memoir, the author expresses anger at the perceived indifference from the rest of the world to the suffering of the Jewish people.

“I realized this is not the time to be indifferent, as I see these parallels, and I see our government breaking the law and treating people inhumanely and taking away our rights,” Taninchev said. “This is not the time to be indifferent.”

Update on Spokane Public Schools discipline

At last week’s mass walkouts spanning high schools Lewis and Clark, Rogers, Ferris, North Central, Gonzaga Prep, St. George’s and Mt. Spokane and Sacajawea Middle School, several were disciplined.

Spokane Public Schools spokesperson Ryan Lancaster said no students were disciplined at Rogers, Ferris or North Central. Students there stayed on campus and didn’t miss significant class time. At Ferris, a handful of students got “extended tardies” for being more than 15 minutes late to class. Extended tardies don’t result in discipline until a student racks up enough of them in a school year, Lancaster said.

At Lewis and Clark, several hundred got extended tardies. Fewer than 100 students earned a detention during a lunch period for missing enough class time. Kids who marched around the school were still technically on campus, Lancaster said, but were disciplined for missing class in unexcused absences. Some parents chose to excuse their kids from class that day, he said.

Sacajawea students organized last week along with the high schools, and over 100 left class and campus in protest. Since they’re in middle school, kids each received detention during lunch for leaving campus.