Escondido School Board to Revise Policy on Restricting Some Books

The Escondido Union Elementary School District board moved toward revising its policy on removing books from school libraries Thursday night, in the aftermath of a controversy surrounding the award-winning children’s book “The Witches.”

The board instructed its staff to craft a policy that would give the school board final say on the censorship of any books. The superintendent now has the final word.

The district placed “The Witches” on a reserve shelf last month, requiring parental permission for pupils in kindergarten through fifth grade to check the book out of the school library.

“The ultimate decision rests with the board, where it needs to be,” board member Dawna Nerhuf said at the meeting.

Parents and teachers on both sides of the issue addressed the board regarding both the policy and the restrictions placed on “The Witches.”

“I’m deeply resentful of some parents’ efforts to censor what my children and the children of thousands of other parents in this district read,” Cindy Dupray said.

Other parents praised Supt. Robert Fisher for his decision, saying that children in today’s society are already overexposed to violent and inappropriate images and ideas.

“In my second-grade class, I’m appalled that some of my students talk about their favorite movie, ‘Terminator 2,’ and we even have some Freddy Krueger fans,” said Teri Farris, a teacher in the district. “They (the students) don’t need any more food for thought,”

The district staff was directed by the board to recommend a policy that utilizes a broad-based committee to handle complaints about books.

“We need a district committee that . . . isn’t so large that you couldn’t reach consensus, but large enough to reach all aspects of our community,” Nerhus said before the meeting.

The decision to restrict the book overrode a district review committee’s 3-1 vote in December in favor of keeping the book unrestricted. The lone dissenter was a parent.

The book, which was a New York Times Book of the Year, was written in 1983 by children’s author Roald Dahl, who also wrote “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” He died in 1990. “The Witches” was also made into a movie starring Anjelica Huston.

Four books have been removed from school library shelves since 1984, Fisher told the board Thursday night. He repeatedly said the books were removed “without my knowledge. I don’t know why, and I don’t know the process used to remove them.”

That statement led Nerhus to chastise Fisher, saying, “It’s your job to know what’s going on in this district. . . . The buck stops with you.”

Catherine Rowe, the dissenter on the committee that reviewed the book, said the book “downgrades children” and should not be in the school library at all.

“It wasn’t the occult part of it, but the way it was written. The fact that it said that children smelled of dog droppings,” and some of the poems in the book threatened children, said Rowe, a mother of two students.

“We’re striving to build up children’s self-esteem, not pull it down. If a student did a creative writing project and they wrote, ‘I hate teachers with a murderous bloody hate, and they smell like dog droppings,’ ” it would not be accepted, Rowe said.

The book, which the district has carried on its library shelves since 1984, had been reviewed by a district committee a year and a half ago when another parent, Linda Linthicum, brought a similar complaint. That committee unanimously approved the book’s continued use.

The critically acclaimed book portrayed the battle of a child, turned into a mouse by witches, and his grandmother to rid the world of witches. The book warns that witches masquerade as ordinary women, their claws hidden in gloves and their baldness under wigs, nd suggests that witches might live next door or be a teacher.

Supporters of the book said children “thought it was hilarious” and recognized it as a tongue-in-cheek fairy tale, and that to place restrictions on the book amounted to censorship.

“The Witches” was given the accolade of Notable Book by the American Library Assn. However, it was also one of the 10 most frequently challenged books in the country during the 1990-91 school year, according to a report issued by the People for the American Way, a censorship watchdog group.

Rowe was also part of a vocal minority of speakers at an October board meeting who objected to teaching about contraceptives in the district, particularly before the end of the eighth grade.

“Kids at that early an age aren’t ready to hear (about) that. They don’t hear it. They’re sitting there in class giggling about it, and they aren’t ready for it,” Rowe said.

“All they hear is that if you use a condom, they won’t get pregnant and they won’t get AIDS.”

However, board member Kathy Marler has reversed her stand of last year, and said she now favors instruction about contraceptives in the seventh grade.

The best time to begin teaching children about contraceptives and birth control has been an agonizing issue in the district.

Marler emphasized that the curriculum, including lessons on birth-control pills and condoms, would have to be appropriate to the age level of the student and stress the failure rates of contraceptives.

The teaching would have to include instruction that abstinence is the only guaranteed means of preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.