When Woodson High School’s newsmagazine covered their pro-Palestine walkout in the 2023-24 school year, they interviewed one of the walkout’s speakers, Safiya*. Soon after the piece was published, Safiya’s private information was leaked by angered parents while her family and the school’s principal received death threats. The school later recalled copies of the magazine due to the intense backlash.

Safiya’s experience wasn’t an isolated incident—during the 2023-24 school year, the Oakton High School community retaliated after their yearbook printed pictures of pro-Palestine protests. Later, Oakton’s administration offered refunds to students who wanted to return their yearbooks and placed the yearbook process under review.

Following these events, principals from several schools across FCPS requested further county guidance on managing controversial content in journalism programs. The county initially satisfied those pleas in November 2024, issuing the Guidance for Student Publications (GSP), a set of guidelines that explicitly gives administrators the final decision on publishing “controversial” content.

“The superintendent of FCPS is the number one authority in this district,” FCPS Chief Equity Officer Nardos King said. “There’s a responsibility that student publications are not going to cause harm to students in our schools or communities, which has happened in the past because we didn’t have oversight.”

In FCPS, principals are responsible for ensuring that publications promote responsible journalism, but the extent of supervision varies between schools. Typically, principals hand that responsibility to a publication adviser.

“In my 28 years of advising a yearbook at McLean High School, the principal has ensured that we do not violate the rules of libelous or obscene content by hiring an adviser who is knowledgeable about publication standards,” yearbook adviser Meghan Percival said. “I, as the adviser, work with student editors to have a set of policies that we follow when making decisions about difficult content.”

The GSP adds an extra step of administrative review. The guidelines encourage principals to determine whether an article’s content is disruptive or to the school, which increases scrutiny in the publication process.

“[The new rules] put principals in a very difficult space because they are having to make decisions at the school level without much guidance from above,” at-large school board member Ryan McElveen said.

FCPS isn’t the only school district in the area to give administrators more control over student speech. Last year, James Libresco and other staff writers for Alexandria City High School’s newspaper, Theogony, wrote several articles analyzing certain controversial school district actions. They were met with severe disapproval from the county’s administration.

When tensions reached a boiling point, Alexandria City Public Schools released a policy stipulating that all controversial articles needed principal oversight and that school-affiliated articles could not be republished in other media outlets without the principal’s approval.

“This was an intentional effort to stop us from sharing the truth and shining a light on actions that the school district had taken that were, in some ways, embarrassing,” Libresco said.

Beyond limiting student publications, FCPS has increased supervision over student demonstrations, as outlined in the updated version of Regulation 2612. It mandates that walkouts “will take place before or after school to ensure that academic activities are not disrupted.”

“In 2019, the FCPS school board passed a policy saying that students have one day per year [excused from school] for ‘civic engagement activities,’ which they can use for going to protests, talking to legislators, etc,” McElveen said. “This policy was meant to correct [differences in school treatment of walkouts], but the climate changed after the 2023 Israel-Hamas walkouts.”

Ever since the current Israel-Hamas conflict escalated in October 2023, students in schools across the county have coordinated protests relating to that event.

“A lot [of FCPS actions] come from concerns that were raised from community groups in the aftermath of Israel-Hamas walkouts, which created a lot of unhappiness on multiple sides of the issue,” McElveen said. “That extended to things like the representation of those walkouts in yearbooks and newspaper articles, among other things.”

Today, students are left trying to determine if their speech will be acceptable in the current political climate.

“The biggest concern I have right now is self-censorship,” Percival said. “Students at a lot of schools don’t even think it’s worth trying to have the conversations about some of the topics that would be important for sharing amongst their community. They feel like it’s going to be a waste of their time, and they might get in trouble.”

First Amendment Violations

Recent FCPS actions altering student freedom of expression guidelines have sparked concern over potential violations of students’ First Amendment rights.

“Our First Amendment is the ability to protest and express how we feel,” said junior Bayann Hamed, a walkout organizer. “This restriction [in Regulation 2612.8], to me, sounds very unlawful. FCPS is suppressing when students may speak out; choosing the times when school is not in session is defeating the whole purpose of this specific type of civil disobedience.”

Senior Sam Cohen holds a different perspective—because public schools are liable for students during the day, Cohen believes that students relinquish certain rights in the process, which means schools have the authority to direct the circumstances under which students can protest.

“In going to public school, students agree to adhere to certain expectations,” Cohen said. “It is true that the school does limit what people say, but it’s not in a way that’s illegal. The school takes on a legal responsibility for the student and gains some privileges over how they can and can’t regulate you.”

Cohen also asserts that the broader purpose of holding walkouts is to fight for a cause, regardless of possible consequences.

“The point of a walkout is to disobey the authority and do something you’re not supposed to do,” Cohen said. “You’re believing in something strongly enough that you’re willing to take repercussions. You’re willing to stand up, break the rules and then take the punishment.”

Cohen maintains that it is not a problem of free speech, but the manner in which those rights are practiced.

“If you are exercising your right to free speech while also violating other rules, you can be punished for violating those other rules,” Cohen said. “If you’re doing things that are causing disturbances not related to the content of your message, you can’t use the content of your message as a shield to get out of all repercussions.”

FCPS states that it hasn’t done anything to alter the status of student’s rights to free speech.

“You still have the right to express yourself in ways that are aligned with the regulations that we put in place,” King said. “I would love for the next generation of famous journalists to come from FCPS. We believe in the rights for students to have freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but we quantify it in regulation.”

According to King, the county’s overarching reason for regulating student speech is to protect students and communities from harm.

“Sometimes, when students go rogue and something is published that is inaccurate or harmful to students in the school, then the responsibility comes back to the principal,” King said. “We need to ensure that publications are not going to cause harm to students or communities. That has happened in the past because we didn’t have oversight.”

The principle of balancing free speech with a safe learning environment was established in the landmark Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. The Court established that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate” and that student speech is protected unless it causes a “material and substantial disruption” to the school environment.

“What the Supreme Court said in Tinker v. Des Moines is that if there’s a real discipline issue, if someone’s disrupting school events by protesting, then that can be regulated,” said Chris Edelson, an assistant professor in the American University Department of Government. “But apart from that, people have the right to speak and to protest, and that should apply to students too.”

The extent to which student demonstrations actually disrupt learning remains a point of contention.

“We don’t want anyone hurt, injured or hated on, no matter who they are,” Hamed said. “Walkouts mean bringing people together for a certain cause that unites us, and the safety of the students is a common goal between both walkout organizers and administration. But it seems as though the [safety issue] is getting worse instead of better with these restrictions.”

Despite FCPS’s assurances that it protects student free speech, recent evidence suggests otherwise. This year, several schools in the district failed to receive the First Amendment Press Freedom Award (FAPFA), a national award given by the Journalism Education Association (JEA) recognizing schools with outstanding student publications for their exercise of free speech. After breaking McLean’s seven-year streak of winning the FAPFA, the JEA cited the recently promulgated GSP as its reason.

“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,” Andrea Negri, the Scholastic Press Rights Committee director of the JEA, said on Feb. 27. “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.”

King believes that withholding the award is a misinterpretation of the county’s intentions.

“I would love to talk to the people who are responsible for saying that good journalists cannot be awarded because of a regulation that we put in place to keep students safe,” King said. “I think that it’s irresponsible of the people who are giving the award to say that because there’s a new regulation that our students are not worthy of an award for their talent in journalism.”

Some hope that the shock of losing the FAPFA will motivate FCPS to more actively safeguard student rights.

“It really is an embarrassment for our district that this has happened, but 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.”

Conversely, FCPS appears to be adopting policies that further expand administrative control over the distribution of student-produced materials. In October, McLean ordered that all student club-related Instagram posts must be approved by teacher sponsors before publication.

“[Teacher oversight of social media is] not yet an FCPS policy—it’s a policy we believe is coming [from the county],” McLean Director of Student Activities Greg Miller said. “There’s been issues across the county when students are part of a club, and they represent the school by saying inappropriate and offensive things that don’t make the club or sport they’re in look good. Certainly, they don’t make the school or the county look good, either.”

Similar to FCPS’s stance, Miller believes McLean is simply increasing supervision of student activities without infringing on any freedoms.

“A lot of the times, [inappropriate posting of material] happens because there’s no sponsor, teacher or coach who oversees what’s being posted,” Miller said. “We still want our kids creating the content; all we are asking is that the teacher is the one pressing the submit button.”

Like Tinker v. Des Moines, the Supreme Court has also established precedent for protecting student social media rights. In Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., the Court ruled that public schools have a limited ability to regulate students’ off-campus social media speech.

While student club Instagram accounts could be considered off-campus social media speech, McLean considers these accounts to be affiliated with the school.

“Social media is a very slippery slope for school districts to regulate,” Libresco said. “The Supreme Court precedent says schools can’t regulate students’ social media posts in their free time. That’s a little different from a club account. But who’s to say that students in that club couldn’t just make their own account and not share the information with the school district?”

National Events

FCPS’s attempts to regulate speech this year coincide with a series of national events. Immediately after President Donald Trump returned to office, his administration sought to restrict speech at institutions where some individuals may hold opposing views.

Trump has focused heavily on speech at college campuses. After decades of these institutions operating autonomously without much government intervention, the administration broke from that trend when it threatened major funding cuts to dozens of universities over anti-Israel campus protests.

“People are willing to stand up for free speech when it benefits them or benefits speakers they agree with, but at the same time, they’re all too willing to shut down speech they don’t agree with,” said JT Morris, supervising senior attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). “That’s a really dangerous predicament for free speech.”

On March 7, the Trump administration announced a $400 million cut for Columbia University, claiming the school failed to protect Jewish students during anti-Israel protests. Now, Columbia has agreed to pay over $220 million to settle antisemitism allegations, and other universities have reached similar settlements with the government.

International students at universities are also being targeted by the administration’s actions. This year, the government has revoked or denied visas from thousands of foreign students due to their criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“There are people in the United States who are here legally and studying but have been detained by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” Edelson said. “A Tufts University student, Rumeysa Ozturk, wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper criticizing the college administration about their policy on Israel and Palestine, and her student visa was revoked.”

As a result of the government’s actions, universities have grown increasingly cautious, fearing that the government may punish them by revoking their funding.

“People are afraid. I see this already at my university,” Edelson said. “Universities are losing research money, and they’re worried that foreign students will not come here as much as they did in the past. That’s an important source of not just funding, but also an important part of the academic environment. Having people from other countries is really helpful.”

Beyond the federal level, state governments have passed laws limiting student speech. In June, the Texas state legislature passed Senate Bill 2972, which prohibits “expressive conduct” at universities between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. This law has been blocked temporarily by a federal judge. Organizations like FIRE challenged the law, arguing it was too broad and a threat to free speech.

“[Universities] are marketplaces of ideas. It’s not only where young Americans go to get an education about their major and what they might pursue as a career, but also an education of [how to be] a good citizen and active in civic life,” Morris said. “If college students have an opinion, they have a right to protest. The First Amendment protects that.”

Student Press

Changes at the national and state level tend to ripple outward, eventually impacting counties and local communities.

“Ultimately, [FCPS policy] comes down to the national climate, and right now, the national climate, no matter what side you’re on politically, is pushing to curtail free speech in different ways,” McElveen said. “And I think that’s harmful to the country, and it’s harmful to our schools. I think it’s important for students to be able to speak their mind within legal parameters.”

FCPS has been fighting a legal battle over the Department of Education’s (DOE) threat to rescind funding for the county following a dispute over the state of transgender bathrooms. This exposes the federal government’s leverage over the county, specifically regarding sensitive political topics.

“Right now, the school system has been labeled an at-risk school system by the DOE,” McElveen said. “We’ve already had instances where the federal government is withholding funding from us on various things, and we’re fighting that in court, but we haven’t been successful yet. It’s very possible that [student expression] could play into the narrative at the federal level that allows them to continue to withhold funding from us.”

Edelson sees the danger of potentially losing student rights as the federal government exercises its power over FCPS.

“Students need to know they have rights too,” Edelson said. “In a time when the government is threatening people’s rights, people should be clear about standing up for rights and not sending students a message that they may not be protected or that their rights don’t matter as much.”

In these precarious situations, Edelson emphasizes the critical role of the county in protecting students’ rights rather than working against them.

“The county government should be in solidarity with students,” Edelson said. “Why are they doing things to make students feel less secure in their rights at a time like this?”

The implications of limiting speech on student press can be damaging. Despite its perceived amateur nature, student journalism plays a significant role in local communities.

“Student journalism is often dismissed as not important or not cracking the real issues, but that’s simply not true,” Libresco said. “In many cities, there isn’t local news; student journalists are the only people there, so the news just won’t get reported if they don’t do it. If something comes up that’s controversial, if they’re able to be censored, then no one will ever know about it. That’s a travesty.”

Ultimately, student journalism acts as an outlet for high schoolers to see different perspectives and develop their own views.

“Education as a whole, and journalism in particular, is about learning to find your voice, to hear the voices of others and to come to new realizations as we share those voices,” Percival said. “When we cut off our voices, and when we only share the least offensive topics we can think of, I think we do a disservice to all of us.”

This story was originally published on The Highlander on February 12, 2026.