Tags and Collars Becoming Passe With New Implants

The new prom rules dictate "business casual" dress. Students will take buses to Manhattan and have a dinner cruise.

Last fall, officials at the Roman Catholic schools banned proms, saying they were fed up with watching students wash away thousands of dollars on liquor-stocked limos and house rentals in the Hamptons on prom night.

In a letter to parents, Brother Kenneth M. Hoagland, a principal at one school, wrote that although the "sex/booze/drugs" were problematic, "it is rather the flaunting of affluence, assuming exaggerated expenses, a pursuit of vanity for vanity's sake -- in a word, financial decadence" that forced the ban.

-- Michelle García

Parent Seeks to Ban Schoolbook About Cuba

When people ask for a schoolbook to be banned, it's typically because the text dabbles in sex or evolution. But in Miami-Dade County, Fla., the passion, as it often is, is Cuban politics.

"Vamos a Cuba" is one in a travel series by Heinemann-Raintree, a Chicago-based publisher specializing in classroom books. A photo of smiling kids outfitted as Pioneers -- Cuba's communist youth group -- adorns the book's cover. Inside pages depict happy scenes from a festival held on July 26, the anniversary of the Cuban revolution.

"As a former political prisoner from Cuba, I find the material to be untruthful," a parent, Juan Amador, wrote to the school board. "It portrays a life in Cuba that does not exist. I believe it aims to create an illusion and distort reality."

Schools spokesman Joseph Garcia said, "It's unusual for the complaint to be based on a geopolitical, rather than a social issue."

The book is being reviewed by a school committee.