Broward School District: completely tone-deaf

I'm the first to admit that I'm a little anal-retentive when it comes to editing. I carefully scrutinize everything I write to seek out typos, misspellings, or misused words, and I easily get into arguments about word usage (as I recently did about using the term "south Florida" instead of "South Florida," based on my belief that, as used here, "south" is an adjective describing "Florida" and "South Florida" is not a state of its own ... well, maybe culturally, but you know what I mean).

This made me a very good law review editor in law school, but sometimes not the best person with whom to engage in a conversation or correspondence.

Anyway, I do tend to spot errors very easily -- I liken it to John Nash (as played by Russell Crowe) in A Beautiful Mind, where the coded letters fairly jumped off the page at him -- and I tend to get a little aggravated when obvious errors are allowed to make it to publication. That's why I'm especially aghast at the Broward County (Fla.) School District, whose 2009-2010 students' code of conduct book included a form that contained the racially-charged (and horribly anachronistic) word "Negro."

Schools are supposed to collect student information by race and ethnicity using new categories from the state Department of Education, said Broward Schools Superintendent James Notter. The district created its form using categories and descriptions from the state Department of Education.

The Department of Education, in turn, got its wording from the federal Office of Management and Budget, said Education Department spokesman Tom Butler.

The state has since changed its wording to eliminate "Negro" as an acceptable term, he said.

Last week, the Broward district sent out a memo and copies of new forms for students to take to their parents but not before upsetting some parents and students such as Jake Edri, 15, of Sunrise, a sophomore in Deerfield Beach High's communications broadcast arts magnet program.

Edri noticed the word when he read through his code of conduct book last week. He was shocked at the description next to "Black or African American," especially since other categories didn't include additional terms.

"For white, it doesn't use Caucasian," Edri said.

Blast Off! tips its bloggy hat to young Jake Edri for demonstrating the initiative to bring this to the attention of the district and others. And shame on Broward County, the state, and the federal government, each of whom (according to the article) seems to be passing blame on to the next, for allowing this to get out to the students.

Sure, it's just a word ... but it has a very particular -- and offensive -- meaning to many, especially in the South. And it's embarrassing that we should have to deal with this sort of thing in 2009. If Broward County needs a proofreader, though, I'm available ....