So when Dupes read that President Bush advocates abstinence-only sex education, she thought she had the makings of a provocative opinion piece.

“Why do the schools only preach 'abstinence only' education?” Dupes wrote in her editorial. “It is not the decision of your health teacher, your principal, the school nurse, or even your school board – but a decision forced upon state and local governments by the Bush Administration that is ideologically, rather than empirically, driven.”

The piece never saw the light of day. Fallbrook High Principal Rod King ordered the student paper's adviser, Dave Evans, to pull it from the last issue in May.

“I didn't really understand why this was being pulled,” Dupes said. “Mr. Evans said that Mr. King was uncomfortable with the content.”

The incident has captured the attention of a national student press group and a state legislator who wants to add new protections to student speech in California.

The pulled editorial is one of two pieces that King killed before publication during the 2007-08 school year. The first was an article in November that was critical of former Superintendent Tom Anthony.

The Student Press Law Center in Virginia has protested both instances of editorial control by administrators. State Sen. Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat, is sponsoring a bill prohibiting school administrators from retaliating against advisers of student newspapers who protest actions to limit student speech. Senate Bill 1370 has passed the Legislature and was sent to the governor's desk Tuesday.

King removed Evans as the Tomahawk's adviser June 5 after Evans asked a Fallbrook Union High School District trustee to meet with parents about the pulled articles. The newspaper class has been canceled, and it is unclear whether the Tomahawk will continue, perhaps as a club activity, this fall.

San Diego attorney Dan Shinoff, who represents the school district, said his client's decision to cancel the journalism class was because of budget cuts decided in May. It had nothing to do with Evans' removal as adviser of the paper in June, Shinoff said.

The attorney would not comment on Evans' removal as adviser or other personnel matters.

As for the editorial critical of abstinence-only sex education, Shinoff said King suspected the piece might have been written by an adult. One passage, for example, reads: “Whether we like it or not, our children do make poor choices. It therefore makes no sense and is not sound policy to deny our children the factual information they need to protect themselves.”

Dupes, who is spending her summer on the soccer team at California State University Fullerton and preparing for her freshman year there, said this week that she alone wrote the editorial and she chose her words carefully.

“I felt like it was a stronger word choice,” she said. “We're referred to as the apathetic generation, so I thought we should step up.”

Janet Dupes, Margaret's mother and a librarian at Bonsall Elementary School, said her daughter worked hard on the editorial and it reflected the spirit of discussions the family has at home on all sorts of topics – from children's and women's issues to politics and religion.

“The First Amendment is something we need to uphold, and you can't ignore it because you feel uncomfortable with the (editorial's) content,” Janet Dupes said. “Mr. King thinks he might have challenges to his moral compass, (but) we are entitled to our differences of opinion and hopefully as educators we get that concept across to our students we serve.”

Bruce Lieberman: (760) 476-8205; bruce.lieberman@uniontrib.com