It’s ironic that the Jefferson Memorial is located here in the District, as the city’s public education system once again finds itself in the spotlight. Jefferson, who was one of the biggest proponents of a free public education system open to all citizens, is no doubt rolling over in his grave at the latest news from D.C. Public Schools: A month and a half into the school year, some students still don’t have textbooks.
Last week, The Washington Post reported on at least six public schools that were still missing textbooks. Superintendent Paul Vance and officials from the schools offered a variety of excuses, from bureaucratic mix-ups to incorrect student enrollment estimations. While these excuses are perhaps acceptable for a small delay in distributing textbooks, it is incomprehensible how they could lead to such drastic situation.
One of the reasons put forth for the hold-up was that an administrator was sick and didn’t place the order on time. While we all can get backed up with work when we’re sick, most of us also have a strategy for taking care of the work that has to get done when we’re not around. It is doubtful that only one person in the entire school administration was capable of ordering the textbooks, and it is a major lapse in oversight that nobody noticed that such an important task was not addressed sooner.
Another excuse given by a school official was a miscalculation of the number of students at the school, which led him to order the wrong number of books. Do we have people who can’t count running our schools? It is understandable for schools not to have an exact count of the number of students attending on the first day of school, but by the second week, they should have a good idea of the enrollment figures. Furthermore, a more prudent course of action would be to purchase extra textbooks in case more students show up than registered. Unused textbooks could be returned to the publisher, retained for the following academic year or even exchanged between schools whose textbook reserves may not have been sufficient. But not buying enough books to begin with when there has been a history of enrollment exceeding expectations is unacceptable.
What makes the situation more pathetic is that the schools are now violating the law. That’s right, the D.C. Council passed the District of Columbia Public Schools Free Textbook Amendment Act of 2001 last year, a which requires the D.C. Board of Education to, among other things, provide textbooks to all students by the second week of school and to certify to the council by the 30th day of school that such action has occurred. It demonstrates extremely poor management on the part of the school system that the legislature had to step in to ensure that the basic tools for learning are provided. What’s worse, though, is that there are no enforcement provisions or penalties in the law. So the schools are doing something wrong?and we now have a legal basis for that point?but there isn’t much anybody can do about it.
D.C. Public School students need all the help they can get?starting with books. Failure to meet these fundamental necessities for learning will only leave D.C. students even further behind and perpetuate the education problem in our nation’s capital. So next time your textbook is out of stock at the Georgetown bookstore, be grateful that you have other options. Have you ever tried ordering a first-grade math textbook on barnesandnoble.com?
