WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Student journalists at Rockville’s Richard Montgomery High School were have won the right to publish a story for their school newspaper about a recent investigation concerning the allegedly unethical side-business practices of their principal, Moreno Carrasco.

The first attempt to write the story, summarizing reports from The Examiner and other papers, was stopped last week by acting Principal Veronica McCall. McCall is serving as principal while Carrasco is on leave for an unspecified illness.

Katie Smith, one of four chief student editors of Richard Montgomery’s Tide, said McCall told them that the story wasn’t appropriate in part because it had been covered in other papers and therefore “wasn’t newsworthy.”

The students then appealed to Sherry Liebes, community superintendent for the school, who initially supported McCall’s decision. On Monday, however, the students learned Liebes changed her mind.

“The decision now is that even though we are not in support of the article, we do not want to do anything that would keep the students from exercising their freedom of speech,” Liebes said, calling the incident a “teachable moment.”

Smith, who along with her fellow editors had considered going public with the censorship had it not been overturned, was thrilled with Monday’s decision.

“It would have been irresponsible of us not to write the story,” she said.

The students aware of Carrasco’s investigation “have either blindly jumped to his defense or have embellished the details. It needs to be understood at the paper distributed within our school.”

McCall believed that to publish the article would have disrupted the school at a critical time as year-end exams loom, Liebes said.

The administrators suggested the students delay publication of the article until the investigation was complete, expected within the next month.

Smith said the students will go forward with the article and will ask Carrasco a series of questions by e-mail about his alleged mistakes, including plagiarizing his business plan.

“Our school has an esteemed reputation,” Smith said. “The fact that he could’ve been doing this — it looks really bad.”

lfabel@dcexaminer.com