Friday, February 7, 2014

More Wasted Money in Utah Schools - Canyon School District Shelves New Books.

Columnist Paul Rolly today pointed in his column that Canyon School District just blew thousands of dollars in new text books for the 2014-2015 year.  How did they waste all this money?  Well apparently know one reviewed the new health textbooks when they were purchased and when they arrived they contained questionable material.  Weird since these were "Custom Canyon School District Editions."

More wasted money on this book
No one read me before buying me!
What questionable material was inside these books.  Apparently the books talk about STD's in a way that is against Utah Law and District Policy.  Yeah, you heard that correctly.  The district purchased text books that violates their own policies and state law.  Regardless if you agree with the law or not; who ever is in charge of curriculum and purchasing over there is clueless to what they are doing. Oh and remember, they asked for a special edit.

So the solution!  Cut the pages out!  Yeah totally destroy any chance of resell or return; just rip those pages out.  Well these were custom editions so who knows if we could have sold them.

But then when the teachers reviewed it again...they hated that the summary was still in there about sexual orientation and practicing safe sex, etc.  So the end solution...shelve the books.  Word is maybe the will use them in the next year instead of 2014-2015; but I doubt they will ever be used.

According to the FCC report on textbooks and ebooks, Schools spend nearly $8 billion a year and average $250 to $1000 per student. Sounds like Canyon just blew a big chunk of change.

This coupled with the school lunch scandal, worries me who is running these schools.

We might as well just through cash in the trash along with little kids school lunches.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pop Quiz: Name 1 Government entity that runs efficiently.

There is more waste, fraud and everything else in government equivalents than in private sectors. Can you imagine if a private company did something like that? If a company is large enough that guy would be fired. If the company is small it is out of business. I don't get it. I am all about downsizing government. They need to be fired.

PS: Yes I know that I work for the government.

BenJoeM said...

Well. You have a great point. I have talked to many at Hill Air Force Base and been shocked at the level of waste.

I guess our country is doomed to waste money. But schools have a more public element in that board members are often elected so I would expect more accountability in these matters. Should these boards demand more accountability?