Theogony co-editor James Libresco, left, holds a sign while Theogony co-editor Casey Donahue, testifies before members of the Alexandria School Board, who have declined multiple requests to be interviewed for this story.
Laughter filled the School Board chamber when Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt suggested that she was “committed to transparency.” For student journalists who packed the room, the punchline landed because of the communications lockdown at Alexandria City Public Schools, where elected officials and school administrators routinely deny media requests for interviews. Their secretive plan to adopt a policy that would allow school administrators to pull the plug on investigative reporting may be at a standstill for now, but it could reemerge at any time to silence the voices of students at Alexandria City High School.
“It shows the pressure the community has put on the School Board is starting to kick in,” said Theogony co-editor James Libresco in an interview. “They’re realizing this isn’t such a good idea.”
Last week, the School Board Governance Committee put the process on “pause,” and vowed to circle back around to it at an unspecified time in the future. School Board Chairwoman Michelle Rief declined multiple requests to be interviewed for this story. And, through a spokeswoman, the superintendent also declined several requests to be interviewed for this story. None of the nine elected members of the School Board were willing to speak on the record about a policy discussion that nobody seems to want to talk about.
“We believe that the dais is the appropriate and best place for the board’s deliberation to take place in a public and transparent way,” wrote Rief in part of a written statement.
THE LACK OF TRANSPARENCY at Alexandria City Public Schools is not new. For years, the school division has denied requests for interviews and tried to communicate through written statements from the School Board chairwoman. That applied to everything from demographic trends to transgender policy. Now that the school system is considering a policy that could deny students their First Amendment rights, the culture of secrecy among the nine elected School Board members shows no signs of breaking anytime soon.
“They owe it to the community to tell us where they stand and what they think and what they want to see happen,” said Councilman Abdel-Rahma Elnoubi, who was a member of the School Board before being elected to City Council last year. “I’ve always witnessed peer pressure against talking to the media, and the superintendent would often frame it as not supportive to her and staff’s work when board members say anything publicly about controversial issues like this.”
The hushed nature of the policy debate presents obstacles for School Board members who are not directly involved in the deliberations of the Governance Committee. A few weeks ago, they circulated a document that outlined a process for prior restraint of investigative journalism at Theogony. That document also threatened to punish students by revoking their “journalistic privileges” if they published in legacy newspapers or new media startups. Now that the committee has hit the “pause” button on the discussion, School Board members will not say where they stand on the First Amendment rights of student journalists.
“When you refuse to talk to the media or the public or when you insist on talking in just one voice — and it’s just the good things — people don’t trust that,” said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, in an interview. “So when things go sideways, the public doesn’t have anything to grasp onto to give you the benefit of the doubt. They are going to be skeptical, and it’s going to cause resentment.”
THE DEBATE OVER CENSORING students started after Theogony ran a series of investigative reports about the “high-school project,” an ambitious yet flawed plan to spread out the city’s massive high school population across four campus locations. The series detailed how demoralized public-school employees were forced to reapply for their jobs as part of a reorganization. It also revealed that school buses ran so late that students would often walk between campus locations. The superintendent also declined multiple requests to be interviewed by the student journalists at Theogony.
“I think it’s part of our responsibility to prepare them to deal responsibly with sensitive issues like this,” said Valerie Kibler, president of the Journalism Education Association, in an interview. “If they are interviewing all of the sides and doing it the right way, the School Board shouldn’t have any problem with that. They should see that as an awesome experience to offer to their students, not one that should be stifled.”
The current policy on student publications is outdated and due for a revision based on a timeline set out by school officials. Although the existing policy allows the school principal to deny publication of stories in Theogony, the recent history of how this policy has been implemented is prior review rather than prior restraint.
During a public hearing earlier this month, former Theogony faculty advisor Mark Eaton explained how he worked out an agreement that he would let school officials know in advance about potentially controversial reporting. During his 13 years as faculty advisor, he says, none of the principals he worked with ever asked him to stop the presses.
“If students journalists enjoy a pattern and practice of figuring out the content they want to publish, and that has gone untouched and undisturbed for a while, the students have a reasonable expectation that they should continue to be able to make those judgments as to content calls regardless of whether there is a board policy on the books,” said Jonathan Gaston-Falk, an education law attorney with the Student Press Law Center.
THE POLICY QUESTION before School Board members is who should have the final say over pulling the plug on stories before they are published. During meetings of the Governance Committee, School Board member Tim Beaty has expressed a preference for the principal being able to spike stories. On the other side of the issue is School Board member Abdulahi Abdalla says he would prefer the faculty advisor to the one with the final say. In the middle is School Board member Ashley Simpson Baird, who is chairwoman of the committee.
“I just want people to talk to each other,” said Baird during the Governance Committee meeting last week. “I’m trying to think about ways we could soften it a little bit where there still is adult oversight and adults are facilitators of educational experiences but don’t have this sort of heavy hand where students feel like they lose agency.”
Advocates for press freedom say they are encouraged that the School Board put the censorship policy on hold. But they say they are also worried that an even worse policy might emerge in the coming months as elected officials dig in and continue to deny interview requests. For School Board members, the question is whether they want to recognize the First Amendment rights of students — a policy decision that could have political consequences when they are up for reelection.
“Just because the school might constitutionally be able to intrude on student journalism and create certain regimes without running afoul of the First Amendment, that doesn’t mean they should,” said Ian Kalish, instructor at the University of Virginia First Amendment Clinic, in an interview. “Student journalists should be allowed to investigate stories, run with stories as they see fit and participate in the full journalistic process without interference from the school.”
WHILE ADMINISTRATORS and School Board members have been shielding themselves from questions, the students have put together their own policy proposal. The suggestion, dubbed “Voices Unbound,” has already received support from the Student Press Law Center, the National Scholastic Press Association and the Journalism Education Association. Instead of giving administrators the power to censor, which is the current policy, the Voices Unbound proposal would explicitly protect the First Amendment rights of students.
“We’ve already done all the work for the School Board by creating a policy with the experts that has the backing of thousands of people in our community,” said Libresco. “But we have had zero commitments from any School Board members that they will implement the Voices Unbound framework.”