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Dozens of students in Boulder-area schools walked out Friday, while most in the state stayed in class or participated in low-key, meaningful activities to mark the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre.

Instead of leaving classes during a national protest against gun violence, students at Columbine spent Friday doing community service work. The school has traditionally closed its doors on April 20, the day two students with firearms in 1999 walked inside and killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves.

About 500 students and activists rallied Thursday night near Columbine High, calling for tougher laws to end gun violence. The event marked the start of the Vote for Our Lives movement, which is pushing teens and 20-somethings to register and vote for candidates who back stricter gun-control measures.

Among those at Thursday night’s rally were students who survived the Feb. 14 massacre that left 17 people dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. That shooting began a national student movement aimed at ending gun violence and tightening restrictions on guns.

Students from more than 2,700 schools and institutions across the country left their classes at 10 a.m. in each time zone Friday to remember the Columbine massacre. After walking out of class and observing a 13-second moment of silence for gun-violence victims, students lobbied to register voters and marched to the offices of local legislatures.

Some Denver Public Schools high schoolers had discussed a walkout and march to the state Capitol to mirror similar protests across the country, but that did not materialize, said district spokesman Will Jones.

Instead, students at Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy in Denver took part in a “Peace Walk” in Harvey Park, adjacent to the school, while a variety of on-campus activities were put on at the Denver School of the Arts.

Students from four high schools walked out of class in and marched to the Boulder County Courthouse, where they chanted: “Hey, hey, ho, ho! The NRA has got to go!” Watershed Waldorf School Junior Dani Cooke said the demonstrators were hoping to combat complacency about gun violence.

“In a place like Boulder, there are a lot of people who don’t recognize oppression or issues of social justice, like gun violence, because they haven’t directly touched our community as much as they have others,” Cooke told the Daily Camera.

“The main objective of these students is to ban firearms completely and confiscate the firearms of law-abiding Americans,” Brown said. “We will oppose them at every step.”

Organizers said an estimated 150,000 students protested Friday across the nation, including at least one school in each state, as they sought to sustain a wave of youth activism that had driven a larger round of walkouts March 14. Activists behind the earlier protest estimated it drew nearly 1 million students.

In many cities, it was common to see crowds of students clad in orange 鈥� the color used by hunters to signal “Don’t shoot” 鈥� rallying outside their schools and at public parks.

The walkouts drew counter-protesters in some areas, including about 30 at a rally outside New Hampshire’s statehouse. In Kansas, about 200 gun-rights supporters held their own demonstration outside the statehouse. Many carried signs and flags, and some brought holstered handguns.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican candidate for governor, addressed the crowd and later criticized the walkout movement.

“Instead of walking out of class,” Kobach said later, “why don’t you stay in class and spend that half hour studying the Second Amendment? You might learn something.”

The Boulder Daily Camera and Associated Press contributed to this report.