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SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) – Hundreds of Idaho high school students walked out of classes on Monday to protest a plan to lay off public school teachers and curtail their rights to collective bargaining.
About 250 students were asked to leave the Capitol in Boise and take their protest signs and chanting outside to avoid disrupting state workers, police said.
The hours-long Boise rally mirrored walkouts and sit-ins by students in other Idaho cities. The protests were apparently organized by students and posted on social networking sites like Facebook.
The Idaho Education Association, which represents more than 12,000 school teachers, is strongly opposed to the plan. The teachers union said in a statement Monday it "had absolutely no involvement in organizing the protests" by students.
The plan restricts collective bargaining by public school teachers to salaries and benefits, removing from negotiations such provisions as class sizes and teacher workload. It also would lay off more than 750 teachers and require students to complete online courses to graduate.
Captain Steve Richardson, regional commander for Idaho State Police, said he was not aware of a similar protest by students in the past.