CdA schools have a tall stack of books to review

Last month’s dustup over John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” in Coeur d’Alene high schools has not stirred a wave of volunteers to help the school district review a tall stack of other books.

School officials were hoping to attract a couple dozen community members to read works of fiction and nonfiction used in grades 6-12 to make sure the books meet district standards and student interests. As of Tuesday, just one person had applied to sit on the new ad hoc committee on literature. The deadline is next Wednesday.

“Ideally, we would like to have literature lovers – people who have a voracious talent for reading and can give us feedback as to how those books may be used in a classroom setting,” said Mike Nelson, the director of curriculum and assessment for the Coeur d’Alene School District.

The district has 88 titles to be reviewed, with more than half of those new additions to the classroom. They include classics such as “Catcher in the Rye” and “Lord of the Flies,” and newer works like “The Kite Runner,” “Life of Pi” and “The Hunger Games.”

“Because of the interest that was placed upon this committee over the last several months, I’m certainly hoping for a great turnout,” Nelson said.

The literature-review group for the past 12 months worked in relative obscurity until it recommended demoting “Of Mice and Men” from whole-class instruction to voluntary, small-group discussion for ninth-grade English. Although the school board didn’t go along with that, the debate touched off widespread media coverage and prompted national literary groups to defend Steinbeck’s novella.

The citizen committee that ended its work last week had been reviewing five novels about every six weeks. The district now is looking for new applicants for a one-year appointment to run from July through June 2016.

“It is a commitment, and a lot of people are not interested in attending that many meetings nor reading that many texts,” Nelson said.

If enough people step up, he added, the district could split them into two committees and double the effort over the next year.

Most school districts in Idaho don’t set up review committees to look at every book. The Coeur d’Alene School Board opted to do that in part to make sure existing and new titles conform under the higher Common Core standards.

A more subjective piece of the evaluation process is how students will relate to the books.

“We want to make sure the text is going to be interesting to the student, that it’s going to be around their age group, that it’s something they can connect to right away,” Nelson said.

The flap over “Of Mice and Men” led the district to establish clearer guidelines for the literature review committee.

Unlike the last group, the new panel will have English teachers involved in the deliberation. At least one-fourth of the committee members must be people other than public educators and school board members.

Committee deliberations are open to the public, and members must be present to cast votes.

All titles first are reviewed by teachers, who write rationales for why they believe the books should be kept or added for classroom use. The committee reads and reviews each title and makes a recommendation to the School Board, which takes public comment for 30 days before making a final decision.

“It certainly is not a very clean nor a very enjoyable process for everybody involved, but it gives everybody in this community an opportunity to inform us as to what they value,” Nelson said. “So we’re hoping that a lot of people will take that as an opportunity to be able to be on the committee.”

This is the list of books that need to be reviewed for the Coeur d’Alene School District: