I see where two local groups have announced the largest in-kind donation ever made to Southern Nevada\u2019s Public Education Foundation, the nonprofit that channels charitable aid to the Clark County School District.<\/p>\n
The Latin Chamber of Commerce and Another Joy Foundation plan to give to the Foundation textbooks for which they list a value of $6.8 million.<\/p>\n
The 161,708 unused books — dating from 2006 or later — were provided by textbook publishers including McGraw-Hill and Pearson.<\/p>\n
Budget cuts for the government youth propaganda camps — in particular, \u201cdramatic\u201d reductions in textbook dollars — made the need for help with books all the more acute, explains Javier Trujillo, chairman of the Latin Chamber and a former Clark County School District teacher.<\/p>\n
The texts, many of them intended for bilingual students, will cover areas such as math, science and \u201clanguage arts\u201d (Did that used to be \u201cEnglish,\u201d I wonder?) in all grades.<\/p>\n
Both groups say the donation announced Feb. 17 is just the beginning; they hope to locate and transfer at least another $15 million or so worth of books in the next 12 to 18 months.<\/p>\n
Presumably the publishers will get hefty tax deductions for six-year-old books they couldn\u2019t sell. That\u2019s fine; that\u2019s why the \u201cloophole\u201d for charitable donations is in the code.<\/p>\n
Check http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/7c6j4gs<\/a> for a quick primer on \u201ctransitional\u201d versus \u201cmaintenance\u201d bilingualism. (Immigrant families tend to prefer that the grandkids be raised English-only, while some groups, including Native Americans and ethnic Hawaiians, have belatedly realized that loss of the traditional language can also mean loss of the traditional culture.)<\/p>\n Mr. Trujillo assures me school district staff have said these specific books are needed, so the Latin Chamber and Another Joy certainly deserve credit for their good works.<\/p>\n A couple questions do arise, though.<\/p>\n Who decided to accept without challenge a valuation of $42 per book to help McGraw-Hill et al. clear out their warehouses? Don\u2019t unsold textbooks lose value fairly quickly?<\/p>\n A local accountant tells me it\u2019s unlikely the publishers will be able to claim a tax reduction at full list price: \u201cThe code says they have to report a \u2018market value.\u2019\u201d And a Las Vegas Rotarian smiled when told of the $42-per-book valuation. \u201cWe used to drive to a warehouse the library District had over on Arville, whenever a new school would open,\u201d the Rotary member recalled. \u201cWe\u2019d fill up an SUV with books, and give them to the schools. We stocked a number of school libraries that way, and we paid a dime a book. I suppose if we\u2019d used a figure of $42 a book, we could have claimed we were making a million-dollar donation, too.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s unlikely former Clark County Superintendent Carlos Garcia had a hand in this deal, as some have suggested. He did indeed leave here to become \u201cvice president for urban markets\u201d at McGraw-Hill in 2005, but in 2007 he moved on to another superintendent\u2019s post, this time in San Francisco.<\/p>\n But why do these publishers appear to have so seriously overestimated the market for bilingual textbooks? (I doubt Las Vegas is the only town in the Southwest being offered such largesse. Could we be talking a million books?)<\/p>\n Lee Wilson is president & CEO of PCI Education in San Antonio. He spent two decades in the education publishing business, and blogs at But the problem isn\u2019t necessarily any huge wave of budget cuts, according to Mr. Wilson.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the supplemental market the evidence points towards a stall — at least so far. Low sales numbers don\u2019t match the funding availability, there is no evidence that a huge amount of funding has been pulled from the market all of a sudden. What we do have is an abundance of uncertainty which is prompting districts to sit on the funds they have.\u201d<\/p>\n Sales of basic textbooks have definitely stalled. \u201cThe large publishers have reacted accordingly with McGraw-Hill laying off over 500 people and HMH a smaller number,\u201d Mr. Wilson reports.<\/p>\n But where does all this uncertainty come from?<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone was expecting a cooling in the market when the stimulus program came to an end in September,\u201d Mr. Wilson explains. \u201cThen the Feds announced that they would grant extensions through next September to pretty much anyone who applied. Prudent districts will sit on these funds until next summer when they have more information about all funding sources. … We may also be experiencing a \u2018stimulus hangover\u2019 similar to a sales dip in the car market after a huge round of incentive driven purchases.\u201d<\/p>\n Another \u201cunintended consequence\u201d of a feel-good federal intervention — a purpose-designed bubble that had to collapse? Imagine that!<\/p>\n And of course, there\u2019s \u201cthe death of the book,\u201d itself.<\/p>\n \u201cThe success of blended print\/technology products is upending the traditional buying processes in districts,\u201d Mr. Wilson reveals. \u201cThis is the result of new regulations on the adoptions … that allow districts to purchase in many media rather than requiring a book. New product evaluation procedures need to bring both textbook purchasing and technology experts together. This is taking some time to figure out and gumming things up.\u201d<\/p>\n Combine that with new mandates from the Department of Education, the counterproductive, blatantly unconstitutional federal agency that\u2019s supposedly forbidden to dictate local curricula (ha!) and that every responsible politician has been promising to take out behind the barn and shoot since 1981 — mandates which appear to exist precisely so states and school districts have to jump through federal hoops to acquire \u201cwaivers\u201d — and you have a government dominated \u201cmarket\u201d in predictable chaos, leaving the best-funded school systems in the history of the world whining that they don\u2019t have funds to hand every kid a couple hundred bucks worth of schoolbooks — which we used to cover in brown paper and turn in so they could be re-used for years.<\/p>\n In a 2009 study, the Nevada Policy Research Institute found the Clark County School District officially reporting per-pupil spending for the 2008-09 school year would be $7,175, but that when all costs including building construction and debt service were included, \u201cThe actual true cost per pupil will be $13,387.\u201d (http:\/\/npri.org\/publications\/funding-fantasies<\/a> .)<\/p>\n And this district needs charity for schoolbooks?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I see where two local groups have announced the largest in-kind donation ever made to Southern Nevada\u2019s Public Education Foundation, the nonprofit that channels charitable aid to the Clark County School District. The Latin Chamber of Commerce and Another Joy Foundation plan to give to the Foundation textbooks for which they list a value of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,26,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-literacy","category-nevada"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-fI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":975,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974\/revisions\/975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwww.educationbusinessblog.com\/k12_publishing\/<\/a>, where as of Dec. 21 we read: \u201cIs the instructional materials market in the tank? … Since November 1st a moderately down market has dropped like a stone. A senior executive at one of the big 4 publishers flatly stated that this was the worst he\u2019d seen it in 35 years. I\u2019m inclined to agree. …\u201d<\/p>\n