Trustees to Vote on Textbook Use

Redondo Beach elementary school trustees, at the urging of a conservative Christian parents’ group, have set a vote on the district’s continued use of a series of readers some parents deem morbid and anti-Christian, district officials said.

“Impressions,” a series of grade-school readers that are the basic reading texts for fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders in Redondo Beach schools, will come before the school board at its Feb. 6 meeting, Supt. Nick Parras said.

The texts have come under fire nationwide from members of the religious right, who disapprove of the inclusion in the books of stories and poems about sorcery and magic. Critics have also charged that the books are morbid in tone. A poem about swamp pigs who have acquired a “taste for flesh” has drawn particular criticism.

The Redondo Beach parents, most of them members of Hope Chapel, demanded last month that the district shelve the books. The board took the matter under advisement but, in interviews afterward, a majority of the members said they had no intention of withdrawing the books. Several said they viewed the request as a belated attempt to censor materials that have already been through a thorough review process.

Nonetheless, because of the dispute, the board decided to schedule a vote on the books “to clear the air,” Parras said. The vote will determine whether the schools will continue using the “Impressions” readers or scrap them for another text.