Committee kills journalism bills

A pair of bills expanding and protecting high-school journalism failed in a House committee Thursday.

House Bill 1015 by Rep. Julie Mayberry, R-Hensley, failed on a split voice vote; it would have required public high schools to offer journalism classes.

House Bill 1432 by Mayberry failed on a 5-7 roll-call vote; it would have increased protections for high-school journalists and their faculty advisers.

The Arkansas Board of Education last year revised its school-accreditation standards, deciding to no longer require high schools to offer journalism classes.

Speaking on HB1015, Mayberry told the House Education Committee on Thursday the class was important and went beyond teaching students how to write and report news stories. It teaches students to communicate and be proficient consumers of news.

“We need to do a better job making sure all of our students have the information that they need to sort through the montage of things that are coming to us,” Mayberry said. “We all hear about the term ‘fake news.’ Well, how do you know what’s fake and what’s not? And that’s what we’re talking about here today.”

Rep. Dan Sullivan, R-Jonesboro, among several other lawmakers, said he believed journalism classes teach students valuable lessons, and they have a place on high school campuses. However, he said he didn’t support placing such a mandate on school districts.

“It seems like we are taking away the authority of the local school board to make these decisions,” Sullivan said.

After the bill was voted down, Mayberry said she was unlikely to bring it back to the committee for reconsideration later in the session, but she noted it was positive to have a discussion in public about the subject’s importance. A handful of high school journalists and faculty advisers spoke in favor of the bill.

Mayberry’s second bill, HB1432, was inspired by an incident at Har-Ber High School in Springdale last year in which school officials censored the school newspaper’s coverage of the district’s student transfer policies. Administrators at the school also disciplined a faculty adviser over the critical coverage.

The bill would further emphasize high school student journalists have free expression rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It would also bar districts from terminating, transferring, removing or otherwise disciplining a student media adviser for refusing to suppress a student journalist’s right of expression.

Karla Sprague, Har-Ber’s faculty yearbook and student newspaper adviser, received a letter of insubordination from her superiors for allowing her students to publish the story questioning the school’s transfer policies.

“I think if [HB1432] was in place then, that wouldn’t have happened because we did not violate the law,” Sprague said.

Mike Mertens, Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators assistant executive director, spoke against the bill, saying it over-protected faculty advisers who already had adequate protection under the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act.

“We do have concerns that this bill expands those protections for a student media advisor to potentially a lifetime contract in a specific position,” Mertens said. “We believe this bill could protect a teacher that could be influencing students to target, berate or create harmful written comments regarding other students, comments that may be considered bullying or could even become more harming on social media.”

He also said students and teachers already enjoy First Amendment protection.