MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. – Minneapolis school board members are demanding an apology and their money back from a school book supplier after district officials failed to vet the material and some found it offensive.

The Minneapolis school district paid Salt Lake City-based Reading Horizons $1.2 million to supply supplemental reading and other material for students in kindergarten through third grade, but the some of the books never made it to students.

Instead, teachers objected to what they claim are cultural and racial stereotypes in the “Little Books” series, and complained to administrators, who contacted Reading Horizons. The company’s officials listened in during a heated school board meeting Tuesday as board members chastised the materials and demanded money back for the books, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

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“Reading Horizons needs to step up to the table,” board member Carla Bates said. “I want them to bring me a check, bring taxpayers of Minneapolis a check …”

Minneapolis Public Schools last month pulled the “Little Books” over “culturally insensitive and unacceptable material,” according to a statement by interim superintendent Michael Goar posted online by The Salt Lake Tribune.

“Due to staffing shifts and the desire to get a program in place for the new school year, the books were not comprehensively vetted,” Goar wrote. “We regret this happened. We will do better.”

One of the offending books, titled “Lazy Lucy,” tells the story of a young black girl in Africa who has trouble keeping her hut clean, while another story, “Nieko, the Hunting Girl,” depicts an American Indian girl and her father donning headbands to hunt a woolly mammoth.

“Reading Horizons’ implementation coordinator Laura Axtell said the focus of these titles – there are 54 in the “Little Books” series – ignores the context of how they’re intended to be used. ‘Lazy Lucy,’ for example, takes place in the safari unit, she said,” according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

Axtell told the Star Tribune Wednesday that the company has been in business for 30 years, and the “Little Books” have been sold to school districts across the country since 2012 without a single complaint, until now.

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“We have not received feedback like this in the past. Nobody complained,” Axtell said. “That doesn’t matter to us, because as soon as we became aware of the concerns in Minneapolis, we took action.”

The company sent an email to interim superintendent Michael Goar during the recent board meeting stating Reading Horizons “takes full responsibility” for its part “in the issue.” Axtell said the company is overhauling the materials to “make sure this never happens again,” but did not promise a refund, according to the Star Tribune.

Axtell said the company is considering a voluntary recall of the “Little Books” series from the more than 10,000 schools that use Reading Horizons materials. She explained to The Salt Lake Tribune that the focus when developing the books has been on teaching students to read, not necessarily to promote cultural diversity or equality, but vowed to improve the process.

“The thing that has become very apparent is that we need diversity,” Axtell said.

“Although the Little Books look like storybooks, she said, they were produced by a small team with a specific technical focus: making sure each word could be ‘decoded’ for pronunciation and comprehension with the tools taught in the wider lesson.”

The $1.2 million contract with Reading Horizons is part of MPS’ “Acceleration 2020 plan” aimed at closing the very wide achievement gap between white and minority students by 2020.

“Currently, the gap is more than 50 percentage points, with just 23 percent of students of color proficient in reading and math,” The Salt Lake Tribune reports.

District officials said they plan to continue to work with Reading Horizons despite the issue.

“Research shows (Reading Horizons) has been successful I improving student outcomes across the country, including outcomes in diverse districts like ours,” Goar wrote in the statement.

Minneapolis elementary teacher Peter Sage said he was among those in MPS who reviewed and recommended Reading Horizons material because “it will do what we know our students need,” the Star Tribune reports.

Fifth graders are reading at a second-grade level, and it’s irresponsible to “sit around and wait for” the perfect culturally sensitive curriculum “while watching students, including my own son, fall further and further behind,” he told the news site.