>> raising awareness is a goodsd thing, but, um, shutting downow the school and there's already a davonmakes it tough forf a lot of people. peopl >> people have the right to rigt stand up to what they want to wo stand up to, and if this is howh they want to do it, hey, i'm, im fine with it. >> reporter: to get a sense of how this thing exploded from individual teachers asking for leave tomorrow, to the point where 300 we're told were okaye noun they had to close down the schools across the city ofy of alexandria tomorrow, here now helen lloyd director ofdirect of communications for the city ofo alexandria schools. >> many of these staff were forr personal leave.al lea personal leave is one of those e things we don't as a practice turn down. down. we don't want to be telling --lg we're not in the practice of telling our staff what to do and what positions to take. we realize that this is personaa leave and when it's personalersa leave we have a practice of o approving that leave whereverr possible. >> reporter: now we haveave surveyed other school districtss around northern virginia. vir