Five Poughkeepsie High School students who walked out of school Friday to protest over problems at the school said they were prepared to be suspended from school or arrested.

“The ceilings leak. The ceilings are falling apart,” freshman Israel Rodriguez said, as angry drivers honked at the students’ human chain across the street. “The school needs to be fixed and no one’s doing anything.”

The students, who walked out of school during seventh period, agreed to move over to the sidewalk to speak with the principal.

The students’ concerns go beyond physical conditions in schools to a lack of teachers and frequent violence.

Israel’s fellow protester and sister, Lily Rodriguez, ticked through several problems as Principal Kelleyann Royce-Giron shook her head in agreement.

“Staff aren’t doing what needs to be done,” Lily Rodriguez said. “There’s not enough security. There’s no nurse.”

“Yes, yes and more yes,” Royce-Giron replied. “You’re 100% correct.”

The Rodriguez siblings’ father showed up first to order the students to move out of the road, and then to support the students, agreeing the learning environment in the high school is “deplorable.”

He also asked Royce-Giron about textbooks and devices the students have been expecting.

“I’m not questioning any of this,” Royce-Giron told the family. “The last update I got on Chromebooks was that they were ordered.”

Royce-Giron suggested the students testify at a school board meeting about how the delays and the conditions are affecting their educations. She said she shares the students’ concerns, and that when it rains, she often comes to the high school in the middle of the night to clean up messes caused by leaky ceilings.

At this week’s Poughkeepsie school board meeting, Superintendent Eric Jay Rosser said the state recently approved the district’s capital improvement plan, which includes lasting repairs to bathrooms, roofs and heating systems at multiple schools.

The problem, he told the board, is that major repairs cannot be done while students are in school.

Rosser expects the major repairs will be done over the summer recess. He said the district started improvements this past summer.

“We rushed to get certain things done,” he explained. “I would have loved to take care of more of the issues in the district, but we did not have the time.”

Rosser said administrators are also working to ease staffing shortages that were mentioned by the protesters.

Meantime, the district has launched a campaign to encourage positivity and a sense of responsibility among students.

Olivia Mima, a freshman, said she felt heard by her principal, and that she will testify before the school board. But Mima and the others said they plan to continue walking out of school during seventh period until they notice significant improvements.

“I’m happy I got say what I had to say today … and I’m happy that people are going to know that this school isn’t safe, and that we can do better.”