Copies of Mount Si High School’s student newspaper came out of the press Monday for the first time this academic year after school administrators and student editors reached a compromise about the publication’s status as an open forum and the principal’s enforcement of the district’s prior review policy.

Principal Randy Taylor will not see copies of the Cat Tales newspaper prior to publication, but journalism students must adhere to journalistic standards that will be set forth in writing in coming days. If the student editors and the journalism adviser question whether any content meets journalistic standards, they will have it reviewed by a professional journalist, Taylor said.

According to Snoqualmie Valley School District policy, the principal “may” request a copy of the paper prior to publication, but no Mount Si principal had done so since the policy was last revised in 1993. When Taylor announced this fall that he intended to exercise that right following the publication of inappropriate content last year, and also requested the removal of the phrase “open forum” from the paper, student editors Sean Byrnes and Julie Censullo balked.

They argued the changes would inhibit students’ right to free expression as well as journalists’ ability to practice journalism with real-life applications.

“Even if they don’t always censor, we’re being filtered through, and we’re still seen as a newsletter from the principal,” Censullo said.

The editors suspended publication of the paper and twice brought their concerns before the school board of directors.

Taylor, Assistant Principal Beth Castle, journalism instructor Susan Holihan, and the student editors reached an agreement last week in a meeting facilitated by Fern Valentine of the Washington Journalism Education Association, an organization of scholastic journalism advisers.

Taylor was satisfied by the establishment of a review process for questionable material.

“That takes care of the concern I had that there would be a rogue editor using Cat Tales as a venue to promote his own agenda. Now there’s a check and balance in place,” he said.

He’s also pleased that the written standards will be taught to all journalism students, and each edition would be judged against the standards.

“We don’t just assume that when kids sign up for journalism, they already know those standards,” Taylor said.

Journalism students worked feverishly Monday morning to get the paper into the hands of their peers by that afternoon. Taylor said he did not preview the six-page issue, but took the editors’ word that the paper would “reach toward high journalistic standards” as those standards were finalized.

“This is very exciting,” Byrnes said over the din of hard-working copy machines. “I’m glad we could come to a compromise.”