In yet another about-face for the Burlington school district, the board and superintendent announced Saturday that a policy requiring administrative review of all student newspaper articles has been rescinded about a day after it went into effect.
Editors at the Burlington High Register, the student paper, said Friday that principal Noel Green was re-instituting a policy that required all articles be reviewed by administrators 48 hours prior to publication.
The students and their allies immediately criticized the move as a violation of the “New Voices” legislation passed by the Vermont Legislature in 2017 to protect student journalists from censorship.
District officials said Saturday a new policy will instead be written to comply with the law.
“The Burlington School Board, together with its administration, looks forward to a policy-making process that is student-centered, and which involves the BHS Register and local First Amendment experts and organizations, with the aim of producing a policy that may become a model for all Vermont school districts,” said a statement signed by Burlington school board chair Clare Wool and Yaw Obeng, the superintendent.
Green’s decision to install a prior review policy had been met with condemnation from state and national press and civil liberty advocates, who said its implementation would likely break the new state law. There was also public pushback from local and state government.
How this prior review policy complies with Vermont’s “New Voices” law, I have no idea. https://t.co/HAn9Yd9I5t
— Adam Silverman (@Wej12) September 14, 2018
Those same legal and media advocates had slammed Green just days before, for ordering the Register to take down a story about misconduct charges the Agency of Education had filed against the high school’s director of guidance, Mario Macias.
The school paper was first to report the story, which was later picked up in the wider Vermont press. After a public outcry, the district reversed its decision and allowed the article to be published, and then announced Friday Macias had been placed on leave pending an investigation into his conduct.
