Hamilton Southeastern (HSE) School Board President Matt Burke defended the school corporation’s position on student walk-outs to honor the  high school mass shooting one month ago in Parkland, Florida that claimed 17 lives.  Burke argued the board faced concerns from “both sides” when a letter from the HSE School District was issued threatening disciplinary action for students participating as part of the national walk-out.

“We had a number of people who were not happy that we went far enough, in our policy and what we allowed to have happen, but we also had people on the other side saying that we had gone way too far,” said Burke. “In fact, I think the most extreme comment was, ‘bastion of liberalism.’  We felt like we made the right decision by kind of taking the middle of the road.  It’s never fun to make people mad.  But the fact that we have people mad at us on both sides , we felt like we had probably taken about the right approach.”

Burke began the Wednesday school board meeting by publicly thanking students, administrators and teachers for “a great day” (presumably referring to the national student walkout).  He said they “did well.”