Despite an appeal by an outraged grandmother concerned that her grandson's mind would be "polluted" by the appearance of the word "damn" in a book, the Federal Way School Board voted to keep the book in the classrooms.

At the September 13th meeting, the vote was four to one in favor of Number the Stars, a book about two girls living in Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943. The fictionalized account of a true story, by Lois Lowry, won the 1990 Newberry Award and has since made its way onto 4th grade reading lists around the country.

According the American Library Association, the book has not provoked controversy elsewhere and is not on their list of the top 100 most frequently challenged books from 1990-2000.

"I don't think we are teaching history well enough as it is, and this is a historically significant book; the use of one word one time should not disqualify it," said Charles Hoff, the board's president.

However, Evelyn Castellar, who cast the lone vote against the book, gave an impassioned plea to remove it from Federal Way schools.

"I asked the question: If the expletive had been used twice, four times, ten times, would we have allowed the book to be used? What other expletive will we allow and how many times can they be used and where does this all stop?" she asked the Board.

"I knew I would lose," Castellar later told the Federal Way News. "But I felt I had to see it through."

Castellar referred to the Revised Code of Washington (RCW), a compilation of all permanent laws now in force, to support her argument.

"It shall be the duty of all teachers to endeavor to impress on the minds of their pupils the principles of morality, truth, justice, temperance, humanity and patriotism; to teach them to avoid idleness, profanity and falsehood; to instruct them in the principles of free government, and to train them up to the true comprehension of the rights, duty and dignity of American citizenship."

In light of this mandate, Castellar stated her position.

"Our District's rights and responsibilities under student expression states the following "Student expression may not be vulgar, lewd, obscene, or plainly offensive, be used to cause a substantial disruption of the educational process or interfere with the rights of others."

Our District's rights and responsibilities under verbal abuse states that "The use of disrespectful or threatening language to school personnel or others students is prohibited." We punish students for using the expletive used in the book Number the Stars in the hallways, at other students or the teachers. The book The Elements of Editing suggests that an author should respect the tastes of their audience. Authors should never feel they have betrayed freedom of speech by deleting profanity to a child audience.

The book was read by the forth graders. The students were only 9 and 10. We as a district are demonstrating inconsistency to our very young children. This compromises our students and may confuse them. "Why can this author use cursing and we can't?" It puts our teachers in a compromising situation. They will be the ones who will need to explain the "why" to both the student and the parent. We diminish the worth of our student's Rights and Responsibilities. We are asking some of our parents to compromise what may be their family's acceptable language policies. I also stated that I believe that there are books for that age group that have an equally compelling message, without the expletive that we should search and use. As a School Board Director I am bound by my oath to follow the law. I followed the law and our district policy."