School officials need to grow broader sense of humor Friday, July 27, 2007 • Express-Times Editorial Yearbook controversy "Libeling monkeys" is one way to view the photo spread of the Phillipsburg school board in the 2007 high school yearbook, in which board members' headshots are superimposed on subhuman primates, on what appears to be the school district's family tree. If that exhibit is a few seniors' idea of satirizing the year the district just finished, the point is well taken. And the parody is tame by modern standards. Town Councilman Jim Shelly had the opposite reaction, opening the yearbook at a school board meeting and calling the photo display "totally disrespectful and inappropriate." Several board members agreed, wondering how such a monkeyshine made it through the editing process and whether it was a staff-instigated slap at the board. High school Principal Mary Jane Deutsch assured them the display was a last-minute change that slipped through a staff review. (Somehow Superintendent Gordon Pethick and Assistant Superintendent Jacqueline Attinello escaped the simian treatment, welded to a squirrel and a flower, respectively.) The original layout had students and faculty portrayed as movie characters (e.g., Shrek, Austin Powers, The Fantastic Four) but had to be yanked because of copyright concerns. If sensitivities have been pricked, it's probably because the district just ended a year that saw a bitter contract fight with teachers, Title IX reprimands by the feds, ethics complaints, the firing of a principal and Pethick's refusal to trim a few top-level jobs, followed by the board's refusal to renew his contract. At least the board may have found a rationale to bring back the bonfire. It would be cheaper and more efficient to heap offensive yearbooks onto a pyre than to send them back to the printer. OK -- at face value, that image is harsh, abhorrent. As hyperbole, as a gentle dig or literary license, it's well, something that editors, young or old, might employ to comment on the year that was. And what a year it was. Time to get over it. Reporter Daniel Hausmann can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at dhausmann@express-times.com.