KERNVILLE, Calif. (KGET) – Parents in Kernville are at odds about a quote in a Wallace Middle School yearbook that forced the school to temporarily stop the distribution of yearbooks and to ask students who had already purchased one to return it.

One parent told 17 News the quote in the yearbook was from Adolf Hitler and said “He who live must fight. He who doesn’t wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist.”

But the school has not confirmed this and the school did not confirm what else was found in the yearbook.

Ashley De La Rosa of Kern Education Justice Collaborative said this could have a lasting impact on the children.

“It’s really disheartening to hear it is happening in your own community […] it’s not only that they don’t have a safe space in their school, but their school is now taking it with them,” De La Rosa said.

The school district sent out a statement that said, “We are disappointed by some of the hateful and disgusting images and words in the Wallace Middle School yearbook. They are not representative of our schools and district’s core values.”

But De La Rosa said the school district shouldn’t have let it get this far.

“The yearbook coordinator, the publisher, again, someone should have seen that and been able to call it out before distributing to children to take home,” De La Rosa said.

According to the district, the students will be getting a new yearbook later. However, at other schools across the country where this has happened, it has cost schools thousands of dollars to reprint the yearbooks and takes time.

17 News reached out to the school district and Superintendent Steve Martinez said, “Although World War II, Holocaust, and Communism are not taught until high school, we recognize we need to teach our students about the impacts of hateful words, speech, and images.”