Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D-Austin) introduced House Bill 4821 this session with the goal of amending the Texas Education Code to more clearly define the authority given to high school administrators over student newspapers while limiting the impact of the 1988 Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier ruling. The ruling declared that high schools did not have to affirmatively promote specific types of speech, such as school newspapers, and that educators did not infringe on a student’s free speech by exercising editorial control for “legitimate pedagogical concerns.”
New Voices Seeking Free Student Speech in Frisco
Poojasai Kona joined Frisco High School’s student newspaper, the Raccoon Rambler, in her sophomore year because of her growing interest in writing and storytelling. Kona quickly found out that not every story she wanted to tell was something all Frisco High School leaders wanted to read.When she joined the paper, Kona began by covering homecoming events, school plays, cross-country competitions, local parades in Frisco and cultural celebrations. Kona said that getting to talk to so many new people and engage with her community was a major highlight of her first steps into news writing because it helped her connect to Texas after moving from Nebraska in her freshman year.
“I started to get really motivated once I was writing because I thought it was a really great feeling,” Kona said. “I have the power to actually tell stories about the South Asian community and stuff, and I didn't think I would have the power to do that.”
Near the end of the spring 2024 semester, Kona wrote an opinion piece in her school paper on the need for menstrual products in the bathrooms at Frisco High School. Kona said she was proud of this piece because she spent hours doing research and talking to experts about how Frisco High School could and should implement period products. Her peers said they really enjoyed the piece when it came out in the print issue of the school paper.
“I was really proud of it,” Kona said. “But this piece also set off the increase in prior review we have faced for the entire past year.”
Kona said that after this piece was published, the Racoon Rambler started to get much more attention from administrators. Her advisor began to discuss the possibility of prior review for all articles, and by the time she returned for the fall 2024 semester, every article had to be reviewed by select faculty prior to publication.
“[The principal] called me in for multiple meetings because of the menstrual article,” Kona said. “I was terrified the first time they called me in, but all they were able to say was that it was a bad article. I asked for a critique, and it never came. They finally just ended by telling me that I should change my opinion to be more representative of people who oppose menstrual products, which is not my opinion at all.”
Kona said that she was motivated to join New Voices Texas because of this experience and that having to submit her work to administrators who could delete or change whatever they wanted to for undefined “pedagogical concerns” had a chilling effect on what she did and did not write about. She hopes that New Voices Texas isn’t just about trying to get legislation passed, and that for her, it has been about showing other high school journalists that their voices have power.
New Voices Speaking Up Outside of North Texas
Faye Zayed joined Rouse High School’s school newspaper, the Raider Rumbler, for similar reasons to Kona. Zayed was passionate about shedding light on the issues faced by her peers, and when she was met with censorship, Zayed joined New Voices because she believed that students shouldn’t be censored just because high school administrators didn’t want to hear what the students had to write.When Zayed, a Palestinian student, chose to write an opinion about the statewide pro-Palestine protests in October and November 2023. Prior to that, she said that she had been able to talk about the culture of Palestine in 2022 with no issue, but that when her opinion was published after the Gaza war began, school administrators began to take action against her writing.
“When I wrote this story about what was going on in Palestine, our assistant principal decided that he wanted it taken down immediately, “ Zayed said. “My advisor fought for my story, and I remember that he [the assistant principal] went so far as to threaten her job.”
The story was never taken down, but the Raider Rumbler added a disclaimer at the end of Zayed’s article, specifically highlighting that the opinion was not representative of the school: “Fakheri Zayed is a student writer. All views expressed in the commentary are her own and are independent of the district, Rouse High School and the publication.”
New Voices Texas has been attempting to get legislation passed to protect students like Kona and Zayed since 2018. David Doerr is a journalism teacher and advisor in Austin, and he said that he joined the movement in 2018 when they were getting their first attempt at legislation passed. Doerr said he joined New Voices Texas because, as an advisor who wanted to see his students succeed, the state didn’t provide him with any protections.
Doerr said that he distinctly remembers how, in 2018, the student paper advisor at Prosper High School had been ousted because her award-winning students kept publishing articles that “made the school look bad.” Doerr said that the goal of a New Voices law would be to make it so that future student journalists and faculty advisors in Texas could continue to provide excellent,, nationally recognized coverage for their communities without fearing for their jobs or for their status as a student.
“The students at the school suffered from some pretty outrageous overreach in terms of prior restraint, prior review and censorship,” Doerr said. “They got the whole nine yards, and then when that teacher's contract was not renewed, it was like a bit of a wake-up call for not only myself but a lot of other high school journalists and teachers in Texas.”
Student Censorship
Student Press Law Center attorney Jonathan Gaston-Falk said that it’s not unusual for students at the high school level to face censorship and prior review because the Hazelwood decision had set a standard for review that allowed for this sort of thing to occur. According to Gaston-Falk, passing a bill like HB 4821 would return things to the standard set in the 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines Supreme Court ruling. Under that standard, students would be able to express speech in school so long as their speech didn't interfere with the rights of others and didn't create a substantial disruption of the educational process, and advisors would have more legal protections in their jobs.Eighteen states have recently passed laws that have helped restore and protect student First Amendment rights at the high school level. Gaston-Falk said that HB 4821 still faces many obstacles since it is not a priority in the Texas Legislature. More controversial and wide-reaching bills involving public education are taking up the bulk of the time this session. But Gaston-Falk believes these obstacles and the current political climate shouldn’t deter student journalists.
“Student journalists should continue to ask those tough questions and investigate some of those more controversial topics,” Gaston-Falk said. “Despite the pressure to self-censor, students should stay true to themselves and keep up their work and their speech.”
