AUGUSTA — The first students marched out of Cony Middle and High School at 9 a.m. sharp.

Most yelled, cheered or booed. Some waved signs indicating their frustration: “MORE CUTS = LESS EDUCATION” and “STOP CUTS TO OUR FUTURE” and “PAY 2 PLAY? STOP TAKING MY CHANCE AWAY!”

An estimated 200 students joined the walkout in the cold and rain Thursday to protest more than $3 million in school spending cuts expected to be mandated by the Augusta City Council.

Middle and high school students gathered briefly outside the school building before marching for 40 minutes to Augusta City Center, 2 miles away, where they chanted and jeered at city leadership. Augusta police escorted students west on South Belfast Avenue.

“These decisions are being made about us, without us,” Carter Miville, a Cony High School senior and an organizer of the walkout, said while en route to City Center.

The cuts include the introduction of mandatory pay-to-play in school sports and the elimination of about two dozen positions, including four school social workers, five education technicians, a school clinician, a first grade teacher, a fifth grade teacher, a dean of students, the reintegration specialist and the middle school music teacher. Augusta schools cut 16 positions, many not filled, in last budget cycle, too.

The Augusta School Department met Wednesday evening to approve “devastating” additional cuts, to reach the $3.1 million reduction bar set by councilors. That further cut included the Latin program and the restructuring of administrative positions in the school department’s central office.

Cony senior Ashley Olson’s stepfather, one of two security guards at the school, could be on the chopping block.

“It’s a really sad situation,” Olson said. “Us students, we’re trying to advocate for them, because what these adults are voting on won’t affect them. It affects the students and staff members, and they won’t be affected at all.”

The protest was entirely student-organized; it was not sanctioned by the school or district leadership, and students who failed to return to school after marching to City Center would be punished, the school department told parents Wednesday.

Cony senior and student school board member Rekha Goonesekere began organizing the walk-out after Tuesday’s Augusta City Council meeting, where a majority of the council decided to cut school spending by $3.1 million to limit the impact of property tax increases on older residents of the city.

Goonesekere texted a few of her friends at about 11 p.m. Tuesday, she said, to get the ball rolling. By the next morning, dozens of students had joined a massive group chat about the walk-out. Later Wednesday, almost 200 people had joined. The message — that schools are not the place to find savings, especially at the expense of students’ quality of education — resonated with her classmates, she said.

“This is way more than I could’ve imagined,” she said.

But it was not just students who attended Tuesday’s protest. Mayor Mark O’Brien, Superintendent Michael Tracy, several school board members and at-large city council members Courtney Gary-Allen and Stephanie Sienkiewicz attended.

Gary-Allen and Sienkiewicz — who have been particularly opposed to cuts to school funding, but have been out-voted by a majority of the city council — marched the 2-mile route with students. Both have children in Augusta’s school system.

Conservative social media pages, meanwhile, have praised the wide-reaching spending slash, saying the cuts are past due. Activist and school board candidate Nicholas Blanchard, known as “Corn Pop,” appeared briefly at the protest after it arrived at City Center. Republican gubernatorial candidate David Jones was seen following and apparently filming Tracy, the superintendent.

Students remained in front of City Center until buses picked them up at about 10:45 a.m. Cars honked as they passed the area, and many waved supportively as the students marched down Belfast Avenue.

This was not a demonstration Augusta will quickly forget, Gary-Allen said.

“This is going down in the collective history of Augusta politics: the time 200 Cony students walked out and demanded their city council fund schools,” she said.

Whether a majority of councilors respond remains to be seen.

The Augusta City Council meets Thursday to hear additional public comment on the budget and to complete the first reading.

O’Brien, the mayor, said he did not know what to expect from councilors after Thursday’s demonstration. He said his personal thoughts are driven by the budget’s impact to taxpayers, given the city’s ongoing property revaluation, but that the majority of councilors, who determine final school funding, may yet be swayed by the first official vote next Thursday, May 7.

“Nothing’s done until it’s done,” he said.