School Law: Dawson v. East

School Law: Dawson v. East Side Union High School District Could the court reasonably have construed the authority of the state board more liberally to arrive at a contrary result? The issue of the case revolved around the question of Channel One (produced by Whittle Communications), a for-profit student educational television network production that contained advertising as well as informative news content.

The appeals court ruled that while the school board that had approved the 10 minute instructional content/2 minutes of commercial content of the Channel One broadcast as reasonable had primary jurisdiction over local policy matters, the courts could intervene in terms of egregious abuses of the instructional purpose of public education. The appeals court ruled contrary to the trial court that the channel was in violation of the school's mission of fulfilling of a valid educational purpose.

The appeals court stated that the commercial content disseminated by Channel was not incidental to the non-curricular broadcast. The question of what was "incidental" was the main issue of the case.

The plaintiff (the State Superintendent of Public Instruction) agreed that it was acceptable for students to be exposed to noncurricular matter with a valid educational purpose (otherwise, a museum trip or a taped TV version of a play a teacher thought was relevant to the syllabus without advertisements would be illegal, since such an excursion or material, strictly speaking would be noncurricular). The plaintiff argued that a school cannot display video advertising to students as a matter of law and the trial court disputed this notion.

The appeals court confirmed the findings of the trial court regarding this matter, and also disputed the plaintiff's argument that advertising was just as dangerous as students being exposed to a one-sided political campaign. The appeals court only agreed that advertisements on Channel One glorified consumption and were not accurate or objective and were inconsistent with the stated statutory purposes of California public education and State School Board policies.

What is so extraordinary about the ruling is that it did not prohibit video advertising to students, but specifically prohibited the type of advertising embodied by the media of Channel One that pandered to adolescent desire for popularity, status, and glitter. The court easily could have come to a contrary result, given that it denied most of the allegations of the plaintiff, other than the specific contention that the nature of this specific advertising was particularly inconsistent with state educational statues and school board policy.

Even the plaintiff conceded that advertising in the form of school vending machines, yearbooks, sports scorecards, etc. had long been tolerated in schools, and would continue to be tolerated. Question 2: What guidelines may administrators who are considering potential educational uses of commercially driven Internet technology draw from the above opinion? The guidelines for school administers regarding advertising thus remain blurry. Video advertising is acceptable, but not the type of video advertising on Channel One.

Regarding Internet advertising, it would seem that using the Internet to research material on websites where advertising may appear would be analogous to the permissible practice of taping programs from the television for use in the classroom. Also, the court noted that using material from magazines and newspapers would similarly 'run the risk' of exposing student to outside, nonobjective advertising content but were still acceptable. What seemed to cross the line, however, was the combination of the invasiveness of the non-educational content into the curriculum, and the.