YORBA LINDA : Book May Be Taken Off 5th-Grade List
Fifth-grade students at Bryant Ranch Elementary School will finish reading “My Brother Sam Is Dead,” but they may be the last fifth-grade class in Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District to do so.
An ad hoc committee recommended Tuesday that the district restrict the book to eighth-grade classrooms starting with the next school year. Teachers at Bryant Ranch will be allowed to finish teaching the book because the students have nearly completed reading it.
“It doesn’t make sense to pull it now,” said Assistant Supt. Sharon McHolland. “Some students have already done their writing assignments and there isn’t time to have them read another book.”
McHolland said the district’s curriculum committee will vote on removing the book from the approved fifth-grade reading list and placing it on the eighth-grade list when it meets in October. If the committee follows the recommendation of the ad hoc subcommittee, the novel will be replaced on the fifth-grade list by a book dealing with the Revolutionary War, she said.
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