Talk of sit-ins and walk-outs abounded across Santa Clarita Valley middle school campuses on Tuesday, as students and their parents spoke out against the Hart district’s decision to cut eighth-grade promotion ceremonies.

The school board’s vote to cancel middle school send-offs affects 3,562 eighth-graders, many of whom vowed Tuesday to not leave middle school without their celebration — or, at least, without a fight.

The ceremonies seem an unaffordable luxury at a time when the William S. Hart Union High School District is grappling with a $28 million state budget cut that will likely result in layoffs.

The Hart district serves 7,077 students in its six junior high schools and tens of thousands more in its high schools.

But district spokeswoman Pat Willett noted that the promotion cancellation isn’t just a budget issue. The ceremonies take a hefty amount of staff and instruction time to organize, she said.

That argument apparently didn’t hold much water with some students and parents — Willett said she’d heard that a parent invited a TV news station onto one campus, and a sit-in was being talked of at another.

Willett said the students are welcome to protest, so long as it doesn’t pose a danger or disrupt instructional time.

Adam Bond, 13, said students at Rio Norte Junior High School were chanting, “Bring back promotion!” during his lunch break at what he described over the phone as a “giant protest.”

“It’s a walk-out,” he said. “We’re just going to stay out (here) and whatever.”

His friend Samantha Gartrell, 14, said she didn’t think it was fair that her class was the first to be denied the ceremony.

“Everybody was looking forward to it,” she said.

Gartrell planned to spend Tuesday night making posters to bring to campus today.

Dozens of parents called the district’s six middle schools and the district office to sound off, too.

“The district says that it costs $40,000 for these ceremonies — that’s $11.42 per child. If the district was so concerned about cash flow, I’m sure every parent would be okay giving $11.50 to see their child’s graduation ceremony,” Collette Sobray wrote in an e-mail to The Signal. “To add insult to injury, the fact that this announcement was made only two months before the children graduate shows an unnerving lack of empathy by the district toward our children and their hard work over the past two years.”

Gloria Mercado-Fortine, one of the Hart district board members who made the decision with the recommendation of parent groups, said the reaction was expected.

“We wanted this,” she said in a phone interview from Sacramento, where she was rallying against state budget cuts to education. “Parents have said, ‘What can we do?’ You know what? That’s a good attitude.”

She suggested parent groups should consider organizing unofficial ceremonies.

Willett said there was still the optional Disneyland trip, and individual campuses “will be doing things to make their eighth-graders feel special,” from dances to field days.

Willett added that the Hart district “would really like them to focus on high school graduation.”

“That’s the real target of our district, graduating from the 12th grade,” she said.