Menifee USD will provide ‘alternative’ dictionary, committee decides

Students at one Menifee elementary school will have the option of using an alternative dictionary rather than one that was temporarily removed from the classroom because of language a parent found objectionable.

Superintendent Linda Callaway announced Tuesday that a Menifee Union School District review committee met and determined that both the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition and another dictionary will be available for use by fourth and fifth graders.

“We are aware that there may have been misinformation and/or misunderstanding with regard to this issue and it is important to clarify that at no time did the District state that the dictionaries were banned from the classroom,” Callaway said, reading from a prepared statement.

“We are confident that the Review Committee’s decision offers a reasonable resolution to this issue and there provides closure,” Callaway said during a school board meeting Tuesday in Menifee.

Officials temporarily removed copies of the dictionary for containing graphic terms like “oral sex.” A parent volunteer working in her son’s classroom came across the term, according to district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus, and submitted a written complaint to the school’s principal, who contacted the assistant superintendent of curriculum.

The complaint resulted in the district removing the dictionaries from the fourth- and fifth-grade reference section at Oak Meadows Elementary School. Cadmus said Monday Oak Meadows was the only district school using that dictionary.

Under district policy, a committee was established to review the dictionary and decide if it should be permanently removed. According to board policy, the committee could have taken up to 30 days to review the complaint and decide on its educational appropriateness. Callaway said the committee was made up of about a dozen educators, parents and administrators, although she could not immediately provide their names.

After Callaway announced the committee’s decision, Board President Rita Peters thanked those involved in resolving the matter that should “not have been released in the first place.”

The district had been at the center of a growing controversy since word of the dictionary’s removal became public. Cadmus said she had been busy fielding many media calls and that some had wrongly believed the district had removed all dictionaries from classrooms.

The gathering was the first school board meeting since the controversy erupted. No member of the public spoke at the meeting concerning the matter.

Before Tuesday’s meeting, Joan Bertin, executive director for the New York-based National Coalition against Censorship — an organization that offers education and advocacy around free speech issues — said this is precisely what the First Amendment is supposed to prevent.

“Removing a book should be based solely on its educational value, not on whether a few parents think it is a good or bad thing,” Bertin said Monday. “On that theory, you would only have ‘Dick and Jane’ left in the library.”

“We don’t think it is a good idea to remove dictionaries,” Bertin said. “It is a dictionary; its value is neutral. This just boggles my mind.”

The term “oral sex,” which the initial parent complaint was about, is not a term that is never heard or written, Bertin said.

Callaway said a letter will be sent home to parents Wednesday and they will be given the option of having their children use the previous dictionary or, if the letter is signed and returned to the school, a McGraw-Hill School Dictionary.

Callaway said after the meeting the fact that a controversy developed was not important, but that the issue was resolved quickly by following district policy.

Related stories: Menifee USD pulls dictionaries due to explicit word

Controversy growing over Menifee district decision to remove dictionary

Tags: linda callaway, Menifee, menifee unified school district, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition, Oak Meadows Elementary School, SWRNN

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