To skip or not to skip — that is the question once again vexing the region.
Few things seem to stir debate about priorities more around here than these rare times that Seattle wins the Super Bowl.
Consider what happened back in 2014. After the Seahawks won it all, the city scheduled a daytime parade — as it has again this year, on Wednesday.
But a third grade teacher at the time penned a communitywide appeal, calling on everyone from the mayor to Seahawks players to urge kids to stay in school. Don’t skip out to go to a “hooky parade.”
“Let our students know where your priorities lie,” the teacher wrote. “Tell them that a single day of school is more important to their futures than ditching class for a parade.”
This made national news. It was so Seattle — for us to reach the American cultural and commercial peak, only to be conflicted about it. One school parent said the city had lost its collective mind in a “sportsgasm.”
The parade did turn out to be the largest gathering in Seattle history. A total of 13,523 Seattle school kids ditched classes that day. More than 550 teachers called in absent, out of 3,000.
I can confess now — though I would have denied it if called into the principal’s office — that my kids were among those at the hooky parade. They were 11 and 13. They got marked with unexcused absences for roughly half that day. To make up for it, we suggested they go around to their teachers and ask for any missed assignments.
This issue is dividing schools again, and not just because of the Seahawks.
Seattle Schools announced that students won’t be excused to go to this year’s parade. Yes, 13,500 kids skipped last time, but that means 37,500 did not. Not everyone’s into the mass delirium of sports.
In contrast, for the recent anti-ICE walkouts from Seattle Schools, the kids could fill out a “Civic Engagement Activity Excused Absence Form,” which allows them to protest or do other “advocacy efforts” outside of school once per semester.
At other schools, though, it’s opposite world.
Eastside Catholic in Sammamish, a grades 6-12 school, has remarkably called off school all day Wednesday for the football parade. But according to a parent, students planning a recent anti-ICE protest there were facing unexcused absences.
“I find this to be hypocritical and a mixed message to students,” said David Charter, an Eastside Catholic parent. “Peaceful civic engagement and the exercise of constitutional rights were met with punishment, while a professional sports victory was rewarded with a day of canceled classes.”
Three state legislators now have put in a bill to align the rest of the state with Seattle. House Bill 2732 would mandate that schools grant one day of excused absences each semester so students could protest or do other “organized advocacy.”
Conservatives seem most upset about this issue when it relates to left-wing protesting. While liberals seem more irked about letting kids out for the commercial spectacle of pro sports.
May I suggest a possible solution: That kids skipping school shouldn’t get excused for it, period?
Seattle’s got it right on the football parade. Schools should be open offering classes every day. And as silly as Eastside Catholic is to completely shut down school for football, it’s got it right on the protests. If kids choose to skip out, it’s on them to work it out with their teachers and deal with any consequences.
It’s actually good for kids to learn how to deal with consequences.
I love that students are protesting, but protests aren’t just another sixth period class. They’re a challenge to the status quo. “Make good trouble” has the word “trouble” right in it. So a state law mandating that every kid gets a free day every term to go protest really drains the revolutionary spirit right out of protesting.
As for a Super Bowl parade, what could be less important, right? But also more stupidly fun.
When our kids “snuck” out of school in 2014 — OK, they were picked up by work-skipping parents — they were exhilarated. Imagine leaving a rules-crazed building at a time of day you’ve never been allowed to leave before, only to find that you’ve joined a sea of people from Seattle Center to Pioneer Square, who also snuck away from things they were supposed to be doing. Sheer kid joy.
They got to see Marshawn Lynch on the hood of a Duck boat tossing Skittles to a rapturous crowd — something truly unique in the human experience. They’re both somehow college grads now.
Point is, neither hooky parades nor public uprisings come around all that often. So you might as well do them up right, kids, by really playing some hooky.
Danny Westneat: dwestneat@seattletimes.com. Danny Westneat, a metro news columnist at The Seattle Times since 2004, takes an opinionated look at the Puget Sound region's news, people and politics.