[Sil_liS]

From the comments on the article:

For those who are not familiar, here are the greater problems:

1) A committee was created, which included the HS English Department Head and the School Librarian. That committee voted to keep all three books in the curriculum. THEN Dr. Minor tells them a second "committee" would be created to get a different opinion. No one knows who served on that committee, nor has anyone seen any minutes from these supposed committee meetings.

Unfortunately, jobs have been threatened over this, and we're talking both teacher AND administrator jobs. In this economy, the Republic faculty cannot risk their salaries. It's up to other stakeholders, like parents and recently-graduated students, whom RSD cannot directly affect, to force the RSD, Dr. MInor, and Dr. Cook to stand by their decision and show us exactly how this decision was made.

2) At Republic, 12th grade English has now been consumed by a year-long senior project. This senior project, although a great idea in theory, consists of "free-writing" for an entire semester. Are the kids reading anything? Nope. Are they learning about grammar and spelling? Nope.

So what does this matter?

Because all of the literature that was supposed to be taught in 12th grade has now been pushed down to 11th grade. That is double the workload for 11th grade English teachers, and now we run into this problem. Two of the books that were previously in the curriculum (Slaughterhouse Five and Twenty Boy Summer) are now gone, and the English teachers must replace them. Not a problem, except Curriculum Director Dr. Amy Cook has told them this is not their year to buy books, so now the English teachers much teach literature, with no books. Why not use the books previously used for 12th grade literature? Because there aren't enough for each student to have one.

The issue isn't the books themselves. The issue is how poorly the entire situation was handled.