Full house expected for Stevenson board meeting
Stevenson High School board members and top administrators have been silent about the high-profile dispute over the November issue of the student newspaper, the Statesman.
While members of the Statesman staff have spoken to the media about the controversy, the only representative of the school who's talked publicly about the matter is spokesman Jim Conrey. District 125 school board members have not returned interview requests, and no statements have come from Superintendent Eric Twadell or Principal Janet Gonzalez.
On Thursday, however, the school board will meet for the first time since administrators postponed the release of November's edition and then forced students to publish it. And if the turnout at the last board meeting that followed a Statesman controversy is any indication, officials can expect to get an earful from the community on the issue.
The session is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. in the administrative building behind the school, 2 Stevenson Drive, Lincolnshire. Although nothing on the meeting's official agenda specifically addresses the Statesman controversy, the topic will be raised during a portion of the meeting reserved for visitors' comments.
"The Statesman staff will be represented at the board meeting, and we do plan on making some sort of statement," Statesman Managing Editor Evan Ribot said.
Ribot expects some community support for the students at the meeting, too. He declined to comment further, saying only that plans were being made.
Board President Bruce Lubin said he anticipates a crowd at the meeting. He is preparing a statement to read to the public on behalf of the board.
He said the problem has been poor communication, not censorship. The faculty, administrators and the students have been meeting and trying to resolve the situation so everyone can move forward, he said.
"We need to get back to educating our kids," Lubin said.
It's the second time this year that administrators and students faced off over the Statesman. The last blowup occurred in February and concerned an article about teen sex and questions about the accuracy of student reporting.
It prompted the creation of a three-member administrative oversight panel that has final say over what goes into the newspaper. It also led to a board meeting in which concerned parents criticized school officials for censoring the students' journalistic efforts.
This time, the controversy surrounded two articles.
One concerned teen drinking, smoking and drug use and included quotes from anonymous sources. Ribot, who wrote the piece, voluntarily opted to kill the story before publication rather than run the risk of administrators investigating and uncovering the sources' identities.
The other article was about teen pregnancy, and the oversight panel ordered it be held because of a lack of factual support and other factors, Conrey said previously.
Students initially wanted to run blank space where both articles would have appeared, but the protest was rejected. They next wanted to publish the issue without bylines, but that request was refused, too.
The November issue eventually hit the school several days late and without the two controversial articles, after local professional media published stories about the flap.