The Centralia School Board will review the policy for course design and the selection and adoption of instructional materials during a study session next month and could adopt a modified policy early next year.

The move comes after some community members, including several parents, a Lewis County commissioner and the publisher of The Chronicle, expressed concern over a young adult novel they claim is inappropriate.

According to Centralia Superintendent Lisa Grant, the book “The Poet X” was approved as an optional reading material in 2019 under the district’s current process, though the book is not required reading.

In an email, Grant said ninth grade English students joined literature circles during their trimester, which included selecting one of five books to read.

Students selected books after a discussion of each book by the teacher and were allowed to switch books if either they or their parents suggested it.

During a Centralia School Board meeting Thursday, roughly a dozen attendees discussed the book, though a majority of the attendees seemed to support keeping the book as a reading option.

Centralia High School sophomore Embry Anna Schluter told members of the Centralia School Board Thursday that while a few of the poems “have mature themes,” the book is “not inappropriate.”

“If some parents don’t want their kids to read it, then that’s their choice, and I support that,” Schluter said.

“However, there are also several other books that could have been chosen to read.”

Tricia Ziese, director of community outreach at Bethel Church, said she attended the meeting in her personal capacity. During her comments, Ziese said she found the book “very damaging, especially for our students and youth who have been affected by sexual abuse.”

“I can’t imagine anybody advocating that this book should be read in schools to 14-year-olds,” Ziese said.

The Banned Book Project of Carnegie Mellon University identifies “The Poet X” as banned, and wrote in a description of the book that it “dives deep into the themes of religion and sexuality through the journal of fifteen-year-old Xiomara, a tenth grader struggling against her mother’s stringent Catholicism.”

“It has won a multitude of awards and been nominated for many others, including but certainly not limited to the National Book Award, the LA Times Book Prize, NY Times Editor’s Best Choice, and listed as one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year,” The Banned Book Project wrote.

According to Grant, the school board will review a modified policy during a Dec. 5 study session and could hold a final reading at the board’s January meeting.

Comments from Thursday’s meeting will be one source of input the board considers as it potentially adopts the new policy, Grant said.

Swope, who was not in attendance Thursday, introduced his own proposal last fall for the Timberland Library System to adopt a book rating system, a proposal county commissioners do not have the authority to adopt or enforce.

In an Oct. 29 Facebook post, Swope said, “No parent should be caught off guard by material like this in their child’s school.”