JOURNALISM TEACHER DISCIPLINED

Superintendent: Decision About Conduct, Not 1st Amendment

A public attack on the principal of Naperville Central High School has
unseated teacher Linda Kane after almost two decades of acting as the
student newspaper adviser.

Kane made negative comments about Principal Jim Caudill to a local
newspaper after Caudill spoke to Kane and the newspaper's student
editors about running articles that he said glorified drug use and
contained inappropriate language.

Kane will continue advising the Central Times newspaper until the end
of the school year. She will be allowed to remain at the school as an
English teacher next year, although it is unclear whether Caudill will
allow her to continue teaching journalism classes, said Alan Leis,
superintendent of schools for District 203. Kane earned teaching and
journalism degrees.

"We expect our employees to work in collaboration with their
colleagues and supervisor," Leis said. "It's gotta be a concern when
you read the comments she made to the paper."

School officials first questioned Kane's decisions after she permitted
a package of stories concerning illegal drugs to run in the Feb. 28
edition of the paper. In addition to a news story that presented both
sides of the issue, the package included a first-person account by a
student who said he used marijuana and later began selling it and a
column against drug use. Two of the stories contained profanity.

Kane was removed from her advising post Monday, after she refused a
request to resign last week. While Kane has said the district was
unprofessional in handling the situation, Leis said officials have
dealt with the issues professionally and by following due process.

School officials also chided Kane for acting unprofessionally when
Caudill visited one of her journalism classes to discuss the
controversial articles - a behavior Kane has said she does not
remember exhibiting.

Calls to Kane were not returned Tuesday.

Leis said the issue is ultimately about the public disrespect Kane
showed to Caudill and not about the articles that were printed.

"From my perspective, the issue here is not about the newspaper
stories or the First Amendment," Leis said. "This is simply a
personnel issue."

The Central Times was inducted into the National Scholastic Press
Association Hall of Fame in 2001. Nine times in its 18-year history,
The Central Times has been awarded a National Pacemaker as one of the
top 25 high school newspapers in the United States. Pacemakers are
often called the Pulitzer Prize of high school journalism.