Students skip school for many reasons: being sick, faking illness to write a paper or just blowing off class. But some students, like Tanya Kinigstein, are missing school March 12 to better their education.

The crippling CSU budget prolongs Kinigstein's education for another semester. With fewer classes and packed classrooms, outrage over her threatened education is prompting her to join a class walkout on March 12.

The walkout is the first step to resistance against the attacks on education, according to Student Unity and Power, the student group organizing the event.

"To have them take our education away from us like this is especially heartbreaking," said Kinigstein. "If they get away with this, who knows what is next," she says of the state legislature in Sacramento, which cut $63.3 million from the CSU for 2009-10.

SUP is a month-old radically-minded student organization dedicated to building a militant movement for liberating education, according to 23-year-old Francis Mead, a women studies major and walkout organizer.

The group was formed to continue the tradition of student organizing at SF State that resulted in the May 2008 walkout, the Fall 2008 occupation of the Quad and various other actions led by students.

"At first glance, it does seem hypocritical that students who want a better education are stepping out of the classrooms," stated 19-year-old Ernesto Martinez, an ethnic studies major who helped organize the walkout. "I don't think being passive and staying in class each and every day without voicing opposition to the budget cuts will do anything."

At noon, students will leave class to meet at Malcolm X Plaza and march to the City College of San Francisco in order to build unity across CSU and city college campuses, according to SUP.

Once the two schools unite, there will be a mass strategy session for planning action on May 1, International Day of Worker Solidarity and Immigrant Rights.

"We are connecting it with our struggle as students, because the budget cuts that affect our education also affect the working class at large," said Mead.

"This country, state, and city need to reexamine its priorities and commitments to its young people," said Sheila Tully, vice president of the SF State California Faculty Association chapter lecturer and supporter of the walkout, in an email.

Tully, an Anthropology lecturer at SF State, noticed faculty support for the student actions and encouraged students to walk out.

"Students are the future of this state and people need to start valuing human capital as much as economic capital," she said.

Martinez wishes students could strike now.

"We are not at that level yet, so a walkout is a necessary baby step in that direction," he said. "When people at State -- students, faculty, staff, workers -- realize the power of unity and solidarity, then a real movement can begin."