toledoblade.com --

ROCKFORD, Ohio - When Mitch Flaugher picked up his daughter's new yearbook and began browsing through it, he was shocked by what he saw.

From the picture of boys wearing jock straps outside their pants to headlines like "Leather and Laces" above the football team photo, it was clear the Parkway yearbook was not suitable for his 9-year-old daughter who was pictured inside.

"There was just a strong, undeniable sexual undertone," Mr. Flaugher said. "I wanted to let [school officials] know these kids are pretty creative. Look at what they slipped past you, or are we so insensitive to these things that no one noticed?"

Parkway Local Schools, a 1,200-pupil district in Van Wert, Mercer, and Auglaize counties, produced a 2001-02 yearbook for all students in the district that was recently sold to students for $35. Mr. Flaugher, who said he has the support of several other parents, took his concerns to the school board last week.

He said he understands that some material is more suitable for high schoolers than preschoolers, but he wouldn't put the yearbook in that category.

"And some movies are rated PG-13, but a yearbook shouldn't have to have a rating," Mr. Flaugher said. "It should be morally and ethically acceptable to everyone who views it. That was the point I was trying to make, and I hope the school can come up with standards so that we can teach some responsibility as well as ensure it won't happen again."

A student dons a bra-like top in one of the nontraditional poses.

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School administrators have agreed to work with him through the complaint process, but they hesitated to take a strong view of the situation.

Superintendent Doug Karst said he wants to remain "neutral and open-minded" for now. But he said he believed many of the headlines and phrases Mr. Flaugher pointed to are "a matter of interpretation."

"I have looked at it. It was brought to my attention," Mr. Karst said. "I would say if you want to read some things into it then yes, maybe there are some things that are a little bit questionable."

Headings to sections on school sports included "Flashem" for football cheerleading, "Get to Third Base" for baseball, "Shake those Pom-Poms" for basketball cheerleading, and "Excessive Panting?" for track.

Captions that accompanied a collage of pep band photos included, "Our bones are bigger than your bones," "He'll toot your horn," "The loudest threesome," "Stay off your back," and "Show some skin." A caption accompanying a girl trying to eat a plate of food on the floor without using her hands said: "Get down and lick it.''

Parkway's yearbook adviser Ed Kuhn said such phrases only are sexually suggestive "if you take it out of the overall picture. To my knowledge it was not written to be sexual content. It was written to be creative."

He said his students designed the yearbook around a teen magazine theme.

"I do review every page, and I do try to make it so that it is noncontroversial, but then my idea of noncontroversial might be different than someone else's," he said.

Yearbook specialists said the types of photos, captions, and headlines the Parkway yearbook staff chose would not be permitted in a "quality'' yearbook.

"It's supposed to be a history book. It's not a joke book. It's something that's supposed to record the year for posterity," said Lew Horn, yearbook adviser at Bedford High School in Temperance, Mich.

Mr. Horn said members of the school's yearbook staff have a tendency to want to make every caption funny, and it's his job to teach them that captions have to reflect what's happening. He said a yearbook can be fun, but never offensive.

"We have tons of what we call student life - everything from haircuts to sibling rivalries. We cover all kinds of things," Mr. Horn said. "There's a difference between being fun and making everything a farce. The whole book should be about what it was like to go to school that particular year."

Linda Fritz Glomski, coordinator of the Great Lakes Interscholastic Press Association based at Bowling Green State University, said high school journalism classes can create a yearbook centered on a teen magazine theme and do it with style.

The press association, which holds workshops and competitions for high school yearbooks, opposes censorship, she stressed.

"We support the First Amendment," Mrs. Glomski said. "The Student Press Law Center in Washington, D.C., is a strong proponent of yearbook advisers and the right of free speech, but they also believe there has to be quality. There has to be common sense, but definitely there cannot be profanity, photos, comments, whatever that are offensive. It would be the same if they made comments about a certain ethnic group. It's not just sex that is offensive."

In Parkway, Mr. Flaugher asked the school board to recall all the books and publish a "clean" version - a request the superintendent said is not practically or financially possible.

"That was my answer to myself and other parents who refuse to allow their young children to view this," Mr. Flaugher said. "I feel we deserve a yearbook just as much as anyone else - one that we can look at. If it means we have to go through the yearbook with a black marker, I guess that's an option."

Mr. Kuhn, an art teacher who has served as Parkway's yearbook adviser for five years, said he has offered refunds to anyone who is offended by the book, but so far no one has asked for one.

Mr. Flaugher said he would like to see the school publish a statement that warns of the yearbook's content and formulate guidelines for future yearbooks. "I'll probably just about guarantee it won't look like this next year," he said.

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