From the Washington Post...

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The Answer Sheet
By Valerie Strauss

Banned student play will go on!

Two high school principals who banned a student-written play critical of New York City reform -- and Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former chancellor Joel Klein -- have reversed themselves and will allow the work to be staged after all.

The play, titled “Declassified: Struggle for Existence (We Used to Eat Lunch Together)” and based on the Greek tragedy "Antigone," was written by 14 students from two New York City schools -- Jamaica High and Queens Collegiate, which share the same building.

Last month the students were rehearsing for the first performance of the play -- complete with music, visual projections and lights -- when they learned from a teacher working with them that their principals had decided to forbid them from staging the work. The school officials were worried about reaction from Klein and Bloomberg.

A flurry of news reports followed. (I published the complete play on Dec. 23 and you can read it here.) Then a spokeswoman for Klein, Natalie Ravitz, told the New York Daily News that Klein had no problem with the play and that the Education Department had called the school to tell the principals to let the kids stage the play.

Now the principals have seen the light and have reversed their initial unimpressive decision.

The play is about the unequal treatment of two schools that share the same building. The city's Education Department wants to shut the storied Jamaica, which it says has been performing poorly, but keep open the new Collegiate.