By all rights, the final edition of the 2008-09 high-school newspaper - which featured stories on a math teacher's retirement and a preview of the prom - should have been tossed into their mental recycling bin by now. After all, the paper's business manager, Sophia Curran, is focusing on business in her senior year and is not returning to the paper. And editor Vaughn Hillyard has graduated and enrolled in college.

Yet Curran and Hillyard can't put the paper behind them. They are still stewing about the May 8 issue of The Challenge, Thunderbird High School's student newspaper. Not because of what was in it. But because of what was not.

On the day the issue was to go to press, the principal pulled the plug on a front-page story about student testing, deeming the story to be inaccurate and the reporting slanted.

The newspaper staff decided to leave the year's final issue with a blank, 8 1/2-inch square of white space dominating the cover.

"We weren't going to fill the hole," Hillyard said. "It was this story or nothing."

The headline of the censored story - "District testing stirs questions among teachers" - doesn't make the article appear very controversial. But the story struck a raw nerve with the Glendale Union High School District administration, the two editors believe, prompting the principal to order it yanked, which, as de facto publisher, he had the power to do.

The district superintendent, Jennifer Johnson, denied that the article received extra scrutiny because it was critical of a test that is a point of pride for the district. She offered to edit the story and have the revised version printed in a special edition before school let out.

"It's not like some blacklisted topic," Johnson said.

Hillyard refused to consider a district-approved article, believing that the original story was solid.

"We don't want to let this one go," said Hillyard, now enrolled in Arizona State University's school of journalism. "It's a loss for us. It's a loss for journalism. We still firmly believe we were right."

He said he was inspired to keep up the fight, especially after the death of legendary newsman Walter Cronkite, whose name graces ASU's journalism school.

Hillyard said he read obituaries and watched documentaries about Cronkite that detailed his fight to expose the Watergate scandal and report that government officials were giving a too-rosy picture of the Vietnam War.

"It goes perfectly with our case," Hillyard said. "That's what the purpose (of journalism) is . . . bring out stories that normally would not be shared."

For Curran, who took journalism only because it was the last open elective, the fight is more personal.

"I could have finished all my homework that night instead of doing (the story)," she said. "We went through all that energy to get the quotes . . . to get the picture, and it was like it was all for nothing."

Hillyard and Curran have spent the summer researching court cases and district policies, fueled by a mix of passion for telling their story and frustration with the district's bureaucratic decision-making process.

"We want to be told that we were right," Hillyard said. "We want them to admit they were wrong."

The Challenge, like other newspapers, was striving to maintain its youthful readership in a changing media environment. As the 2008-09 school year began, the paper's editors decided to concentrate on issues that mattered most to students at the school.

That meant fewer stories about the Ping-Pong club and more stories on subjects such as alcohol, marijuana and "sexting," or sending sexually explicit text messages.

The paper's faculty adviser, Sheri Siwek, said Principal Matt Belden raised an eyebrow on some stories but did not interfere with their publication.

"To his credit," she said, "he was really trying to let the kids write relevant articles."

Interest in the school paper seemed to increase. Staffers noticed that more students were reading the paper at lunch hour and discussing it in the hallways.

"It was kind of a new thing for us," Hillyard said.

Before the year's final issue, the students gathered to pitch story ideas. One student suggested a story about the Performance Based Assessment test, a five-day written exam that's administered in most classes.

The test is a crown jewel for the Glendale district, which has used it for decades to monitor skills taught in each classroom. It has been glowingly written about in education books and journals.

Yet students routinely heard teachers criticizing the tests. "Teachers are always calling out the test," Hillyard said. "They're saying it was a waste of time. They're vocal."

The newsroom crackled with excitement about the subject.

"It was like, 'Why didn't we think of this before?' " Hillyard said.

A reporter, Teresa Hauer, who was finishing her first year on the staff, volunteered to take the story on. One of her first interviews would be with Principal Belden during his regularly scheduled session with The Challenge staff.

The discussion, which involved Hauer, Curran and Hillyard, became oddly heated, Curran said.

"You could tell by his answers that it was like touching a sacred topic," she said.

Belden talked about the test for a while, then shut down, the editors recalled. He said the paper should get answers from the district. The student reporter e-mailed a district official and the superintendent but did not receive a reply.

In the ensuing weeks, the students talked to teachers who agreed to have critical comments about the test used in the article. They also placed an anonymous survey in teachers' mailboxes. The results indicated that teachers were against the test.

Through their adviser, the students learned that their reporting was creating a stir among administrators.

On the morning the story was due, the editors met with Belden. It was clear that the principal didn't want the story to run, but the students thought that they had shot down his arguments. They left the meeting feeling confident they had won the day.

"We were almost arrogant," Curran recalled. "He (Belden) can't say no. He can't do it."

But he could. Hillyard said that at 2:45 p.m., Belden called to say the story had been killed.

District policy allows a principal to remove a story from the paper if he or she feels it is inaccurate, biased or would cause a disruption at the school. Belden, through a district spokesman, refused The Arizona Republic's request for an interview.

After the story was killed, the staff of The Challenge briefly discussed splashing "Censored" across the front page. But Hillyard thought that would be tacky and that it was best to leave the story's space blank.

"Through this whole thing," he said, "(we) remained respectful."

Two days later, staffers delivered the paper to classrooms and could hear the gasps and questions from students.

"I think we got the response we wanted," Hillyard said.

Since then, Curran and Hillyard have found themselves, unwittingly at times, ensnared in a district appeals process. Hearings have been taped. Their testimony has been timed.

They've lost at every turn.

"It's really easy to get discouraged," Curran said. "How can we win? It's always being judged by someone inside the system."

Superintendent Johnson, in a written decision, detailed several problems with the article and how it was reported. The survey, she said, did not reflect the views of a majority of the teachers on the staff, as the article said, just those who responded. Additionally, Johnson wrote, the student reporter's questions to the administration showed bias. One, for instance, asked why the district could not eliminate the test rather than make staffing cuts.

"I understand the passion the students bring," Johnson said during a phone interview, adding that the school has a responsibility to teach fair and accurate reporting. "That doesn't mean that students get to do what they want."

The students pleaded their case at an Aug. 19 meeting of the Glendale district board. But, as they had expected, the board unanimously voted that the decision to kill the article was proper.

Now the students are looking to go to court.

Hillyard moved into a dorm next to ASU's Cronkite School in downtown Phoenix the week of that district board meeting and has started his college career. But seeing the name of the CBS News legend every day reminds him why he is still battling his former high school:

"It's become more of a realization it is something we need to do."

Curran expects this to be her last journalism battle, but she said she has learned a lot from it.

The principal and superintendent, she said, probably expected the students, and the issue, to have gone away by now.

"Little do they know," she said, "they're dealing with passionate people."

Reach the reporter at 602-444-8473 or richard.ruelas@arizonarepublic.com.