Fauquier High School Principal Roger Sites, Assistant Superintendent Frank Finn, Student Newspaper Adviser Marie Miller and four other advisers and principals from the two additional high schools in the district met Wednesday to discuss three major adjustments to be made to the policy.

The policy currently states the school board will act as publisher, the principal and adviser as co-editors, and students as assistant editors to any publication, in addition to requiring that content be suitable for audience members of all ages. The administrators discussed giving editorship back to the students and changing the intended audience age to reflect the readership of a high school audience.

Finn has sent the changes to the school district attorney in Richmond to propose amending the policy to reflect the recent discussions.

"We crafted in the meeting what we proposed in terms of changes we wanted to make and have an attached regulation to go with that," Finn said. "We want to make sure we understand the implications and where that leads us."

Miller said changing the language of the policy was a topic of discussion because of high school student journalists' intended writing style.

"We want to change it to be suitable for ‘the audience for which it is distributed' so we don't have to write for elementary school kids," Miller said.

In addition to giving editorship rights back to students and changing the language of the intended audience, Miller also said they discussed tweaking the introduction that defines, "These publications are not intended to provide a public forum for students or the general public" to introduce the idea of student publications acting as a limited forum.

"Our newspaper has a very long history of acting like a forum," Miller said. "So we have a little bit more latitude to tackle tough issues."

If the school attorney agrees, the advisers, principals and superintendents will reconvene to discuss the added regulations to the policy that will highlight the specifics of the projected changes. Once they have completed the regulation, it will be sent to Richmond for the attorney's approval. The superintendents, principals and advisers will then re-approach the Virginia School Board Association with their amended policy. Miller said they are using the Fairfax County, Virginia policy as an example of their desired focus.

The new policy that limited the rights of student publications in Fauquier County was adopted over the summer without the consultation of the adviser or students.

"We didn't find out until Sept. 27; we had no idea," said William Wilcox, editor-in-chief of The Falconer at Fauquier High School. "Miss Miller came back from a journalism meeting -- I was coming in to do late night when she told me. I was extremely dismayed by the entire situation."

Miller said while she is happy about the proposed changes, she still does not agree with the policy's introduction of mandatory prior review, but trusts Sites will put his faith in the students and herself.

"Roger has never asked to review an article, and his advice is always good," Miller said.