Baldwin ? It was back to the blackboard Monday night for the Baldwin school board as it once again tried to come up with a policy for handling public complaints about classroom textbooks.

The board met into the early hours of this morning going over its latest policy proposal line by line — and sometimes word by word — making changes and recommendations.

Board member Stacy Cohen was the most outspoken critic of the latest proposal, which was drafted by curriculum director Connie Wehmeyer.

“There are so many things wrong with this I don’t know where to begin,” Cohen said.

Wehmeyer, however, pointed out to the board that she had been instructed a couple of weeks ago to prepare a policy based on guidelines from the Kansas Association of School Boards. She also noted that she had little time to do it.

The continuing controversy over the book policy stems from a complaint several weeks ago about the book “We All Fall Down,” by Robert Cormier. As a result, the book was pulled from a class that had been reading it at Baldwin High School.

Cohen said the latest draft of a policy set requirements that were too restrictive for most books, especially novels, to meet. Cohen brought with her two books — “Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain and “Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger — that she said could not be used or kept in the school library under the proposal.

Questions also were raised by Cohen and other board members about the proper establishment of a committee to review complaints about school books.

Earlier in the meeting, those attending had a chance to weigh in with their views on the book policy. Some of them were teachers.

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“The proposal is not only excessive, it directly micromanages what goes on in the classroom,” said Donna Pratt, an eighth-grade language arts teacher.

Todd Cohen, who is Stacy Cohen’s husband, said the proposed policy set up too many hurdles and made it easier to have a book removed from the schools. He also said books had to be written in true-to-life form, including the use of everyday language, for them to be credible with youths.

Others, however, felt differently.

Roger Dressler called Cormier’s book “smut.”

“It goes against everything I try to teach my kids,” he said. “We don’t want smut read in the classroom.”

Holly Gaylord, a former teacher, said she was “pretty disgusted” with the book. But she said the book could be taken out of class but left on the library shelf to give those who wanted to read it the freedom to do so.

The board had not made a decision about a final policy as of the Journal-World’s deadline Monday night.

The board also was criticized by some at the meeting for taking up a discussion of the book policy at a Saturday meeting earlier this month. The book issue had not been on the agenda when it was released to the public.

Board President Ed Schulte shouldered the blame for the criticism, and emphasized there was no intent to hold discussions out of the public eye.

“It’s just a struggle to move forward and do the right thing,” Schulte said.