Sonoma County student protests punctuate calls for greater campus safety in wake of student’s stabbing death

It was a collective youth protest that rivaled any Sonoma County has seen in a decade or more.

The wave of walkouts, campus demonstrations and street marches denouncing school violence and demanding greater safety featured thousands of secondary students from at least 10 schools stretching from Santa Rosa to Petaluma on Wednesday.

And they had a decidedly Gen Z flavor.

While some students at Santa High School brandished placards with slogans such as “No more Band-aid solutions” and “Lockdown should not feel normal,” others carried signs with a QR code.

That code, explained Santa Rosa junior Hannah Gurtovoy at the end of Wednesday’s student walkout, planned in solidarity with numerous other schools, provided a link to a petition for a cause she’s been pushing since last summer.

That national campaign, called “Stop The Bleed,” calls for teachers to be trained in first aid for severe trauma — a grim reflection of deadly violence visited upon a rising number of American schools in this generation.

Gurtovoy was among the thousands of local high schoolers and middle schoolers who walked out of class Wednesday, a week after 16-year-old Jayden Pienta was stabbed to death at Montgomery High School in an altercation with another student.

Students from Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Rohnert Park, Petaluma and Sonoma raised their voices in demonstrations to show solidarity with their Montgomery peers, and draw attention to what many described as unsafe conditions, among other issues, on their own campuses.

“What, more than the death of a student, do we need,” beseeched a young man standing beneath the flagpole at Analy High in Sebastopol, “to start focusing on keeping schools safe?”

Wednesday’s protests, spearheaded by a student-led movement — its motto “Value life, not violence” — were remarkable for their breadth and reach, involving students ranging from 7th grade to 12th grade.

For size, the combined protests ranked alongside the largest local street demonstrations in Sonoma County in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 death at the hands of Minneapolis police, as well as the marches after 13-old Andy Lopez was shot to death by a county sheriff’s deputy in 2013.

By early evening — as students milled outside Santa Rosa City Hall, waiting for their turn to speak at a packed meeting of the Santa Rosa City Schools District’s board of trustees — turnout was so great that far too many were on hand to fit inside.

So, many waited into the night for another a chance to speak their mind.

‘It took a fatality to get us here’

Wednesday’s walkouts — and, in the case of Petaluma and Casa Grande High schools, “walk-ins” — came on the heels of recent, similar strikes at Montgomery and Maria Carrillo High School.

They followed an extraordinary gathering Tuesday at the Friedman Event Center in east Santa Rosa, where an estimated 800 people came together for a “listening session” put on by the Santa Rosa City Schools district.

At that assembly, student after student demanded that school officials do a better job safeguarding them. Among their requests: safety meetings to start the school year, better information during emergencies, better alarm codes, more drills.

When all else fails, said Gurtovoy — if nothing else, a realist — it’s important that teachers be prepared for “bleeding emergencies,” as it says in her petition. She was told in September that the school lacked the funds for the two-hour training.

But the stabbing death of Pienta has given new momentum to her push to establish the teacher training program at Santa Rosa High School.

“It is extremely unfortunate that it took a fatality to get us here,” said Gurtovoy. “This should have happened years ago.”

‘None of this OK’

From Wednesday’s outcry, it was clear the stabbing at Montgomery High also has pulled to the surface, for many protesters, memories of their own brushes with campus violence.

“School should not be a place of danger,” proclaimed Andre Achacon in an address to Santa Rosa High schoolmates shortly after noon. Achacon recalled the tense hours he spent in lockdown in 2019, when a 16-year-old boy was shot and wounded by a 17-year-old at nearby Ridgway High.

“For two hours we sat in silence on the ground, no knowledge of what was going on. This year alone, we've experienced multiple shelter-in-places and that is just our school."

Achacon said he and his peers were protesting the normalization of such lockdowns not just locally, but nationally.

"This isn't an isolated issue,“ he said. ”It's a systemic issue. None of this is OK."

He said he wants more campus supervisors, better communication from school and better evacuation policies.

Following his remarks, hundreds of students streamed from the school’s exits, one carrying a sign that students echoed in chants.

“We’re just kids!” they shouted.

Many headed for the school district’s administration building, where more speeches were delivered.

Standing in front of the building, listening respectfully to every last one of those addresses, was Superintendent Anna Trunnell, the predominant spokesperson for the district in the aftermath of the March 1 stabbing.

‘Should be writing my college essay’

Around 200 students from Rohnert Park’s Credo High walked off campus at lunchtime. Striding with them, shouting into a megaphone she didn’t really need, so strong was her voice, a young woman asked, “Who keeps us safe?”

“WE keep us safe!” came the reply from fellow marchers.

Later, students from Credo and Technology High, also in Rohnert Park, congregated at La Plaza Park in Cotati, where organizers and student leaders gave speeches.

One carried a sign that read, “I Should Be Writing My College Essay Not My Will.”

Credo junior Jackson Chittister recalled a moment last year when a student in his history class last year pointed a pocket knife to his neck in a joking manner. The student was suspended for the incident but the topic was not brought up again, he said.

“I laughed about it at the time but I felt kind of threatened,” Chittister, 17, said.

Although he feels comfortable reaching out to teachers for help, he wants his school to bring on a “student resource administrator” that can check in with “high-risk kids” — those who are struggling with their mental health, he said.

Middle schoolers join the fray

At Herbert Slater Middle School in east Santa Rosa, scores of 7th and 8th graders left their campus at about 11:30 a.m. to join a noontime rally at Montgomery High School.

They were escorted by parents and school staff who did their best to keep the procession on sidewalks and out of the street.

Amid their call for safer schools and an end to campus violence, many also carried on ordinary conversations about school life and hopeful futures.

“Are you going to Newman?” one student asked another. “All your friends are at Montgomery.”

As they arrived at Montgomery, the middle schoolers were warmly greeted by the high school students in front of the school’s Performing Arts building.

At a brief rally, Montgomery senior Rudy Lopez called for genuine change created by real activism.

Lopez said Pienta’s death had brought the students together and unified their call for change — “for actual solutions,” he said.

“It’s time to make a difference, a real difference. No more of that Instagram activism.

“A tragedy like this should never be the reason that we all gather here today that we’re all here to support each other, but unfortunately, it’s a reality,” he said.

When the speeches were over, high schoolers escorted the middle schoolers back to the Slater campus.

Montgomery sophomore Jackson Hals, 15, took part in the demonstration to show support for those grieving Pienta’s death.

"I'd like the school to do better and the staff to do their jobs," he said. "They should be there for the students if they're having a hard time."

Many of those who marched in the afternoon then made their way to Old Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa, for a rally, then still more marching — from the square to City Hall, site of the evening school board meeting, two blocks away.

Among those gathered at the square was Mae Pickering, a Credo High sophomore who wants to see mental health services bolstered in schools.

"We're high school kids. We all have issues,” she said. Part of the problem, she added, is that some students “aren’t getting the help they need.”

Nick George, a Montgomery junior, sat with an accusing sign: “His blood is on your hands.”

George was referring to Pienta’s death and previous reports, mentioned last week by police, of altercations involving Pienta, the 15-year-old stabbing suspect and another 16-year-old Montgomery High student and friend of Pienta’s that was stabbed in the hand in the March 1 fight.

"Everyone knew there was a conflict,” George said.

Not far away, another student held this sign:

“A death should not be a wake-up call.”

Hours later on Wednesday, a trio of police on motorcycles, lights flashing, stopped traffic at the corner of Santa Rosa Avenue and First Street, so protesters could safely make their way to City Hall, for the school board meeting. The 187-seat City Council chambers quickly filled to capacity.

Parents distributed pizza. A student in the courtyard announced that they intended to rotate in and out, so more of them could be heard.

One parent concluded: “The kids need to speak.”

Staff Writers Martin Espinoza, Madison Smalstig, Mya Constantino and Jeremy Hay contributed to this story.

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.