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Education Code Section 48907The following language is reproduced directly from the California
State Education Code. Each governing board of a school district and each county board of education shall adopt rules and regulations in the form of a written publications code, which shall include reasonable provisions for the time, place, and manner of conducting such activities within its respective jurisdiction. Student editors of official school publications shall be responsible for assigning and editing the news, editorial, and feature content of their publications subject to the limitations of this section. However, it shall be the responsibility of a journalism adviser or advisers of student publications within each school to supervise the production of the student staff, to maintain professional standards of English and journalism, and to maintain the provisions of this section. There shall be no prior restraint of materials prepared for official school publications except insofar as it violates this section. School officials shall have the burden of showing justification without undue delay prior to any limitation of student expression under this section. "Official school publications" refers to material produced by students in the journalism, newspaper, yearbook, or writing classes and distributed to the student body either free or for a fee. Nothing in this section shall prohibit or prevent any governing board of a school district from adopting otherwise valid rules and regulations related to oral communication by students upon the premises of each school.
Scholastic Press Rights in CaliforniaIt is important that advisers, editors and their school communities have a clear understanding of their rights and responsibilities under California law. They should know and understand Education Code, Section 48907, which details the relationship between student rights and school regulations. This policy carries the weight of law and has been tested in court several times since it was last amended in 1977. Following the Supreme Court decision of Jan. 13, 1988, called Hazelwood School District, et all. vs. Kuhlmeier, a number of efforts have been made to apply that restrictive ruling to California schools. However, two important legal advisories were issued that same spring, both clarifying for school administrators that the California Education Code was still in effect and that it superseded the Supreme Court ruling. The first of these came from the office of Breon, O'Donnell & Miller on Jan. 21, 1988. It points out that "the State has preempted the rights of local school boards to determine control over official school publications... (and) gives responsibility for assigning and editing the news, editorial and feature content to student editors; the responsibility which resides with local schools is for the faculty advisor to maintain professional standards of English and journalism..." It concluded, "Because California law has made such a strong statement about the free speech rights of student (publications), the Hazelwood case will have minimal impact in California..." The second was a Legal Advisory from the State Department of Education sent to "All County and District Superintendents" and dated March 4, 1988. The question which it addressed was "the extent to which county office and school district officials may edit or delete material written by students for school-sponsored newspapers or other publications." This heavily footnoted document points out that "a school district rule which generally prohibits... `potentially sensitive' topics... is not permitted by the statute. Unless the treatment of an otherwise permissible subject could reasonably be construed as obscene, defamatory, illegal, or disruptive, school officials do not have authority to delete material submitted for publication `as a matter of taste or pedagogy.'" The advisory further observes that "it is permissible, under Section 48907, to hold student submissions to high standards of proper English and journalistic quality. However... school officials in California may not engage in prior restraint or censorship based on journalistic concerns. In holding students to high standards of responsible journalism, school officials are limited to `post-publication responses,' such as grading or discipline." The advisory concludes that school officials are permitted to engage in certain types of prior restraint, "but only under procedural limitations that would pass constitutional muster. That is, all publications rules must be stated in writing in layman's terms in regulations issued by the... district; a school official intending to censor must tell the student the reasons for any deletions in advance in terms the student can understand; and the student's opportunity to seek timely review of any potential deletion must be guaranteed." The Breon advisory mentions that Hazelwood "disapproves of speech which is ungrammatical, poorly written, inadequately researched, biased or prejudiced, or intrusive into particular student's or parent's privacy," and suggests that these factors might be considered by a faculty adviser in determining what are "appropriate professional standards of English and journalism." It
is in this area that advisers need to make certain that
their staffs contain students who have been adequately trained
to function in the roles of editor and supervisor, and
that they also be well-versed in these standards themselves. Reprinted from Journalism: Model Curriculum Guidelines |
Officers:President Treasurer State Regional Director
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