Everett’s School District finally stopped fighting to fire one of the teachers who stood up to the District’s anti-free-press practices.
In the process, Jackson High School has gained Kay Powers, an experienced English teacher with a sterling reputation.
It’s time for the district to let this be the end of its continued suppression of student expression.
The story started three years ago, when Everett High School’s principal demanded to review the content of the school newspaper.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 20 years ago that school administrators have the right to review school-sponsored publications.
The problem is that principals tend to be afraid of anything that may seem negative. When the Everett principal sought to review the school newspaper, students at Everett and Cascade high schools started off-campus publications.
The school district, afraid of what these publications might write, forbade Powers and other school publications advisers from helping editors of off-campus publications.
After administrators found that Powers, then adviser to both the newspaper and literary magazine at Cascade, had let a student editor use a school computer, they fired her and disciplined the student.
After months of pre-trial wrangling, the district agreed to rehire Powers with back pay and to drop its attempt to revoke her teaching certificate.
It’s time for the district to find a way to teach students to live in a society that values critical reporting and opinion.
The NBA made a mistake
The National Basketball Association made a mistake in allowing the Sonics to move to Oklahoma City.
The NBA has taken a team from one of America’s largest markets to a small one.
It’s taking basketball back to a time when teams played In Syracuse and Rochester, N.Y.; Anderson and Fort Wayne, Ind.; Oshkosh and Sheboygan, Wis.; and Moline, Ill. In the 1950s, the NBA left those towns for Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and later Seattle, Atlanta, Houston, Cleveland and Dallas.
The NBA will soon have seven of its 30 members in cities without teams in major league baseball or football — Memphis, Orlando, Portland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, and, now, Oklahoma City.
None of these cities adds significantly to the NBA’s national TV audience.
By leaving Seattle, the NBA eliminates a large part of its TV audience.
We watch the NBA playoffs because we have an interest in the NBA from seeing standings in our newspapers every day and seeing the teams play our team. Now, NBA interest here will sink to the level of ice hockey.
With this move, the NBA loses credibility by telling teams that they don’t have to honor leases on arenas that cities built to the specifications of teams, as Seattle did for the Sonics just 13 years ago.
Evan Smith is the Enterprise Forum editor. Send comments to entopinion@heraldnet.com
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