ILLINOIS -- Two state newspapers have gone to court to get details involving a secret settlement between Lake Land College and a former administrator.
The Mid-Illinois Newspapers, comprising the Mattoon Journal Gazette and the Charleston Times-Courier, had tried to intervene in a federal breach of contract lawsuit brought by former vice president Goble Jessup against the college after he was fired in April 1997.
A settlement in the Jessup case was reached before a federal judge in the U.S.
NEW YORK -- Despite their victory over administrators in retaining the free-press guidelines the newspaper has operated under for 30 years, the editors of the student newspaper at Freeport High School say they are still waiting to publish their first issue.
"We've kind of won the battle but lost the war," said Flashings news editor Michael Leonard.
WASHINGTON -- Three high school students who were fined and suspended in November after a stranger posted an anonymous death threat on a Web site they created successfully appealed to the school board to have the decision reversed.
The students from Eastlake High School in Sammamish created the Web site from their homes as a forum for their classmates.
WASHINGTON -- Following a four-year court battle, a state judge ordered a school district to pay more than $58,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union in March for refusing to mail the organization 13 pages of public documents.
The ACLU of Washington requested documents describing school district policies and copies of disciplinary records in December 1995 from Blaine School District in northwest Washington.
CALIFORNIA -- Principals at two different high schools have censored their schools' student newspapers in recent months, despite a 23-year-old law that grants free-expression rights to students in the Golden State.
The principal of Nogales High School, in the Los Angeles suburb of La Puente, confiscated all 2,400 copies of the Feb.
PENNSYLVANIA -- A middle school teacher and principal are suing a former student for defaming them in his personal Web site.
Justin Swidler was expelled from Nitschmann Middle School in Bethlehem in August 1998 after school officials discovered his Web page.
Bills would make high school athletic associations more open The Georgia and Pennsylvania legislatures introduced bills this session that would require their states' interscholastic athletic associations to abide by state open-records and open-meetings laws.
The Georgia Equity in Sports Act would deny education funding to high schools whose interscholastic sports are regulated by athletic associations not adhering to Georgia open-meetings and open-records statutes.
OHIO -- Four months after they were threatened with suspension for handing out an underground newspaper, the editors of Lockdown finally distributed a sequel to their controversial first issue -- across the street from their high school.
Devin Aeh, the editor of Lockdown, had been trying for months to win the right to hand out her publication at Nelsonville-York High School but decided in February to distribute it across the street from the school to avoid a possible suspension.
"I guess I'm glad that we were just getting to pass it out at all," Aeh said.
A Pennsylvania student expelled in December for an online conversation with a friend has filed a lawsuit against his private high school.
In the America Online Instant Messenger conversation, which took place from the students' homes, the student said "stupid people should be banished or killed." At the end of the conversation he said he did not really think stupid people should be killed, instead saying they were annoying.
How school authorities at Friends' Central School in Wynnewood received a transcript of the exchange is uncertain.
CALIFORNIA -- A state judge ordered a community college to produce documents relating to a confidential 1999 discrimination settlement in March.
Judge Larry Gaddis ruled that Sierra Joint Community College in Rocklin must release all documents to the public regarding the settlement, including the full amount paid by the college.