Easton School Board: 'Nickel & Dimed' Can Stay

Nickel & Dimed can stay at Easton Area High School, the school board said Tuesday evening.

By a 4-2 vote, the board overruled who say--for a variety of reasons--that the book is inapporpriate classroom material.

In Nickel & Dimed, author  to explore how America's poorer residents live.

Opponents of the book--in Easton and around the country--object to it because they say Ehrenreich uses it to push her political agenda, because she makes what they call anti-Christian statements, and because it contains a passage on how to fake your way through a drug test.

Eric Adams, a Lower Saucon Township resident, has lobbied to have the book removed from Easton Area High School, where it's part of an advanced placement English course.

"It promotes a political agenda in a publicly funded classroom," Adams said.

At the meeting he was joined by his mother Sandra, who argued that the book is actually beneath high school students.

"It’s funny. It’s easy to read. It has the 'F word.' But that's called entertainment," she said.

The book had its supporters, too, like Bernie Varela, who was part of the original committee that approved the book.

She noted that her daughter is reading it in a college journalism course, and argued that Nickel & Dimed is important not because of its content, but because of what it teaches students about rhetorical devices. 

And if it does contain biased material, "Shouldn't we be exposing our best and brightest to controversial issues?" Varela asked.

In the end, the board agreed to keep the book--which isn't a mandatory selection--on the shelves, ending an issue that's been debated since 2010. 

As he had a few weeks earlier, board member Robert Moskaitis suggested that's far too long for the matter to be up in the air.

At the end of the meeting, he noted that the next committee meeting will take up new science curriculum.

"That's a lot more important than Nickel & Dimed," he said.