About 200 students at Highland High School took part in a scheduled lunch-hour demonstration at the school to protest hard-line, enforcement-only legislation in Congress, but several hundred others began walking out of Highland, Albuquerque and Sandia high schools this morning in seemingly spontaneous solidarity with nationwide protests in perhaps 100 U.S. cities today.

About 300 students gathered at the University of New Mexico around 10 this morning, then marched downtown to Albuquerque's Civic Plaza where the crowds grew by several hundred more, according to Journal education reporter Amy Miller, who is covering the walkouts and will have a full story in tomorrow's Albuquerque Journal.

Miller said students communicated through text messaging and on the popular Web site MySpace.com.
There was a stepped-up police presence at Civic Plaza, with mounted patrol officers standing by and police helicopters overhead, but no incidents were reported, Miller said.

The atmosphere at Civic Plaza was somewhat festive, with chanting and people dancing in traditional Mayan garb, but some of the students interviewed said they were protesting laws they believed to be unfair to people who have come to the United States to work hard and contribute to society, Miller reported.

Some schools reported heightened absenteeism today -- about 400 of Rio Grande High School's 1,800 students didn't come to school today, Albuquerque Public Schools spokesman Rigo Chavez told the Journal.

But Highland Principal Nikki Dennis said she didn't see any significant increase in absences today.

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