Summer Reading...Need advice

Students within our department are required to read during the summer. My students (seniors) are required to read three texts...one required, two chosen from a list. So far I've had no complaints.

The freshmen read Lord of the Flies, and the juniors read The Giver and The Good Earth. These were chosen by the teachers and were pulled from our curriculum as well as the national curriculum list (although The Giver is quite young (as far as the reading level) for juniors.

So I was approached today by admin to choose new books that were less controversial... that there have been parental complaints this summer. I immediately answered "okay", but less than 2 seconds later I said..."no, not okay."

This is a slippery slope I'm not willing to slide down. Our teachers have valid reasons for choosing the literature they chose and they plan to utilize the themes in these books with discussion and writing within their own classrooms...(at least I'm hoping these teachers chose these books for some valuable educational reason.) If we change books, who's to say someone else won't complain? Can we please everyone? If we do that, will we please no one?

It's a rough way to start the school year and a definite downer for teachers who are excited about the year getting underway. What do you guys think?

Are there alternatives? Can we put a list out there and allow the students to choose from the list? Does that defeat the purpose of having classroom discussion on a specific piece of literature? What are the purposes for reading. The New York Times ran an article last week that promoted summer reading for kids in order to keep their minds engaged with something academic over the break. And Ive found, for the most part, students enjoy having the reading to do over the summer.

Is it truly possible to say "Read whatever you want" and students will be able to understand themes and realize emotional or intellectual development within the book's characters and/or possibly within themselves without discussion with others?

We'll see how this plays out. I've asked to meet with admin and the parents to find out what exactly the problem is with these three texts. I'm open for discussion, but I'm not open to change a classroom plan b/c one parent decides it would be better for her children. Options, or opportunity for options,I'm fine with.

By the way...it's one parent...the same parent of two children...one child is a freshman, the other a junior. And the junior apparently is now coming forward to say how disturbed he was as a 9th grader (two years ago) while reading The Lord of the Flies. We had no idea. (And that book is only for the College Prep class.)