Students are seen walking out of Redondo Union High School in protest of in-person classes on Jan. 12, 2022. (Photo credit: Getty Images) Students in various school districts across the U.S.
have held walkout protests this week over safety concerns about in-person learning due to the current surge of COVID-19 cases in the country.Many of the participants are lobbying for remote learning options or more stringent testing procedures in their district amid the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant, which is already causing teacher shortages and lower attendance among students.
Some of the country's biggest school systems have reported absentee rates around 20% or slightly more, with other individual schools seeing far higher percentages of missing students.Some districts have already shifted temporarily to remote learning.
Out of the roughly 100,000 public schools in the U.S., nearly 4,200 were closed to in-person learning as of Jan. 10, according to the community event website Burbio, which tracks K-12 school closures in all 50 states.