Fallbrook High School will not have a student newspaper in the coming school year, the apparent fallout of a move by administrators to remove the paper's adviser after he protested the censorship of an article and a student editorial.
Principal Rod King removed Dave Evans as adviser to the Tomahawk newspaper on June 5, the last day of school, Evans said.
Evans said King, who could not be reached yesterday, had objected that he approached Fallbrook Union High School District trustee Bill O'Connor on June 4 about discussing the pulled articles with parents and students.
The news article, which was to have run last November, included information about the impending departure of former Superintendent Tom Anthony, Evans said. The school board bought out Anthony's contract in January for $320,000 after several years of tumultuous relations with teachers.
The editorial, which had been scheduled to run in May, expressed two students' objections to sex education that teaches only abstinence, Evans said.
“In an act of blatant retaliation, the principal canceled the class and removed me as (adviser) after complaining to me for doing an 'end run' around him by warning the president of the board, Bill O'Connor, that a lawsuit by students and parents was imminent,” Evans wrote this week in an e-mail from Croatia, where he is traveling.
“I simply asked Mr. O'Connor to ask the principal, who had cut me off, and the superintendent to meet with the parents, students and myself to find a way to resolve all concerns internally and quietly,” Evans wrote.
O'Connor could not be reached yesterday. District Superintendent Tom French declined to comment, and his secretary referred questions to the district's attorney, Dan Shinoff.
Yesterday, Shinoff said he had just returned from vacation and would meet with French next week to discuss the matter.
“(Students) don't lose their constitutional rights when they walk through the schoolhouse door, but there is an obligation of the school district to supervise and exercise editorial control when they touch on certain issues,” Shinoff said.
State education law, Section 48907, affirms a school district's right to prohibit publication of material that “is obscene, libelous, or slanderous.”
Also prohibited is “material which so incites students as to create a clear and present danger of the commission of unlawful acts on school premises or the violation of lawful school regulations, or the substantial disruption of the orderly operation of the school.”
Adam Goldstein, an attorney advocate for the Student Press Law Center in Arlington Va., said the Fallbrook district had no legal right to prohibit publication of the article or editorial.
“Nothing about either piece was illegal or materially disruptive,” he said in a June 27 letter to Evans. “Nothing would have violated the rights of others or prevented the normal operation of school.”
Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, said yesterday that school administrators across the state have retaliated against newspaper advisers for material they deem inappropriate or offensive.
Over the past two years, there have been 14 such cases across California, including the one in Fallbrook, he said.
“Administrators can exercise prior restraint, but only under very limited circumstances,” Ewert said. “What is happening is since the stories and editorials don't even come close to going in any of those areas, and therefore administrators are unable to censor that content, they then are turning on the advisers to pull the stories instead.”
The demand places advisers of student newspapers in a difficult situation, Ewert said.
“Either they violate the law and pull the story and violate the student's rights, or refuse to obey the principal's directive and then they face retaliation,” he said.
State Sen. Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat, is sponsoring a bill that would prohibit an employee from being dismissed, suspended, disciplined, reassigned, transferred or otherwise retaliated against for acting to protect a student's speech.
Senate Bill 1370 has passed the Assembly and Senate, but it has since been amended slightly and reapproved in the Assembly, said Adam Keigwin, a spokesman for Yee. Another vote in the Senate is expected in early August, after which the bill will go to the governor's desk.
Bruce Lieberman: (760) 476-8205; bruce.lieberman@uniontrib.com
