Jamestown  (CSi)  In a show of solidarity, a number of  Jamestown High School students, Wednesday morning, at 10-O’Clock, joined a  nationwide classroom walkout to protest gun violence, following the mass shooting on Valentine’s day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida where 17 were killed, the number of minutes the walkout lasted .

Before a moment of silence, Jamestown High School students gathered on the school’s front sidewalk, as a student read the list of  names of the students and staff killed at Parkland.

Jamestown Public School’s released a statement concerning the Walkouts.

“Students in some communities are planning protests against gun violence. We know that the issue of guns in our society is a controversial and divisive issue. We will neither encourage nor prevent student participation in such activities although we will treat these like any other school absence. We will strive to keep school as normal as possible, and to discourage activity within school that creates conflict. We encourage parents to talk with their children about the right to protest, and about how they will respond to requests to participate, or how they will respond to those that choose to do so.”

Principal Adam Gehlhar says around 50 of their 650 students joined in the walkout, peacefully.

He said some (students) did not follow the protocol for parents excusing the absence and consequences will be enforced as per our policy.

Students from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Md., last month began the first leg of a protest calling for legislation to curb gun violence.  Washington Post photo by Bonnie Jo Mount

(AP)  Around the nation, students left class at 10 a.m. local time for at least 17 minutes — one minute for each of the dead in Florida. At some schools, students didn’t go outside but lined the hallways, gathered in gyms and auditoriums or wore orange, the color used by the movement against gun violence.

Over and over, students declared that too many young people have died and that they are tired of going to school every day afraid of getting killed.

“Enough is enough. People are done with being shot,” said Iris Foss-Ober, 18, a senior at Washburn High School in Minneapolis.

Some schools applauded students for taking a stand or at least tolerated the walkouts, while others threatened punishment.

About 250 students gathered on a soccer field at Colorado’s Columbine High, while students who survived the Sandy Hook Elementary School attack in 2012 walked out of Newtown High School in Connecticut.

In joining the protests, the students followed the example set by many of the survivors of the Florida shooting, who have become gun-control activists, leading rallies, lobbying legislators and giving TV interviews. Their efforts helped spur passage last week of a Florida law curbing access to assault rifles by young people.