High School Students Protest

Today, During my history class, I noticed that there was a whole bunch of noise coming from outside the school. At first I thought it was a riot or people trying to break into the school or something! But we looked out the window and it turns out today there was a city-wide protest against the board of public education. I guess the board has been making massive budget cuts in the public schools in Florence for the past few years and this week another cut was made, so all the high school kids in the city attended a planned protest that took place this morning. They marched around chanting and yelling and drumming for almost 2 hours and when we got out of class we went to the windows of the school that overlook the street they were marching on at the time. We were told that the situation could be dangerous for us because the kids aren't fond of the private schools in the area because their school systems have no money while the private schools are well off. But it turns out that the kids marching actually liked us! They encouraged us to start chanting with them in Italian and also chanted "USA! USA! USA!" Pretty interesting morning to say the least. In class we learned that the budget cuts are causing all sorts of problems. For example, The Special Ed. students no longer have separate teachers - they are thrown in the overfilled classrooms with all the rest of the students. Some schools even require students to bring their own toilet paper because the school can't afford to stock it. It sounds like the situation is really bad and has only been getting worse. It was definitely an experience witnessing their protests this morning but I'm glad the streets are empty and quiet again!!