Seattle High School Students Petition for Their Right to Learn
After the school board abolished the city's high school, students and volunteer teachers showed up to class anyway, refusing to let their education end.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The high school trouble might as well have never occurred as far as things at the Central school buildings went yesterday. Promptly at 8:30, Principal Edwin Twitmeyer and a corps of teachers volunteered their services pending the solution of the difficulty, knowing their pay was uncertain. About 200 pupils reported for class just as though nothing had occurred. A petition was drawn up by the students, addressed to the Board of Education: 'The petition of the undersigned students of the recent Seattle high school most respectfully shows to your honorable body that on the afternoon of Friday, March 17, 1893, we learned that you had taken final action upon the maintenance of a high school in the city of Seattle, and that you had notified the principal and teachers of said school that their services would no longer be required and that said school had been abolished. We are anxious to continue our studies, and to that end would most respectfully petition your honorable body to provide for us some suitable means that we may not be wholly deprived of the educational advantages in this city.'
“We are anxious to continue our studies, and to that end would most respectfully petition your honorable body to provide for us some suitable means.”
Education funding crises and school board volatility are perennial issues in Seattle, but the students' direct action—showing up to learn despite the closure—remains a powerful example of civic engagement by young people who refused to be silent about their future.
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