McLean High School failed to continue its seven-year streak of winning the First Amendment Press Freedom Award (FAPFA)—a national award given to outstanding student publications for their exercise of free speech—due to an FCPS document, the Guidance for Student Publications (GSP).
The GSP is a set of guidelines FCPS released on Nov. 14 that suggests administrators should have the final decision on “controversial” student publication topics. The award’s joint committee announced on Feb. 27 that because of the GSP, the schools would not be eligible for the award.
“For the last few years, the majority of the committee has voted against giving the award to schools when there is conflict between the district and the individual campus,” said Andrea Negri, the Scholastic Press Rights Committee director of the Journalism Education Association. “While McLean’s editorial board policy does seem to support the Tinker standard as a whole, [the GSP] leaves it up to individual administrators and campuses to put that into editorial board policy. An administrator could come under fire for controversial content and go back to [the GSP’s] policy.”
The Tinker standard refers to the 1969 Supreme Court ruling of Tinker v. Des Moines, a case that established a precedent of protecting freedom of speech for students. The committee decided to offer McLean and Chantilly High School, who had a decade-long history of winning the FAPFA, a new recognition meant for student publications who exercise free speech to the best of their ability under censorship.
“We were kind of shocked because we’ve been winning this for so many years in a row,” said Lizzie Sun, editor-in-chief of Chantilly’s publication, The Purple Tide. “We’ve never had anything restraining us this much.”
Chantilly’s journalism staff forwarded the email announcing that FCPS schools lost the FAPFA to at-large school board member Ryan McElveen, who has stood against the GSP since its inception.
“I was really shocked and horrified when I first heard [about this],” McElveen said. “It really is an embarrassment for our district that this has happened.”
The day the awards were announced, McElveen shared his thoughts in an email sent to Superintendent Michelle Reid and other FCPS officials, as well as McLean’s and Chantilly’s publications advisers.
“The Board had an opportunity to take action on [affirming student free press] last December and neglected to do so,” McElveen wrote in the email. “We owe a formal apology to past winners Chantilly, McLean and frankly all of our schools and students for allowing this to happen.”
Prior to finalizing their decision, the FAPFA committee reached out to both schools’ advisers for the GSP guidelines.
“I provided the [guidelines] to the committee [and told them], ‘Look, this is the written guidance, but [our publications] don’t have to follow it,’” Chantilly journalism adviser Kris Brown said. “It didn’t seem to matter to the committee members who were reviewing the application.”
Other members of the county say the FAPFA committee misinterpreted the GSP.
“It was a misunderstanding by the organization of what we’re doing with the guidelines and what they actually say,” Chief Academic Officer Sloan Presidio said.
McElveen hopes the district’s suggestions for managing student journalism will change in order for FCPS student publications to be eligible for the award in the future.
“In a way, it’s a good thing that the schools have been denied the award because it’ll shine more light on the issue,” McElveen said. “Hopefully it will [cause] people to take action.”
This story was originally published on The Highlander on April 2, 2025.
