The letter TODAY newspaper had no room to print last week:


I'd like to chime in on the Clark/Griesman debate about books and computers. To recap, the Clark position is "books are out of date before they can even be printed" while the Griesman claim is "Basic text books are never out of date." Clark's rebuttal cites 50 years of recent history and Griesman has not yet had a rebuttal published.

I trust Clark does not mean to assert the Lancaster ISD actually permits classes to be taught using 50-year-old textbooks. It is perhaps useful to remind readers that the state of Texas reviews all textbooks for all subjects on a six-year cycle to ensure, among other things, that Brown V. Board of Education and Gore v. Bush Supreme Court cases (of 50 and merely 6 years ago) are covered. State-approved textbooks are bought by the state, not from local funds. However local schools may buy non-approved textbooks and still recover 70% of the purchase price from state funding. So, there is no reason the local district should be using out-of-date books. (Or, as two different angry parents asserted to the LISD board of trustees on 2 Oct 2006, there's no good reason for students at our brand new high school to be 5 weeks into their AP math courses with NO TEXTBOOKS AVAILABLE AT ALL. )

By contrast the state does not reimburse the district any percentage of the costs of computers purchased in lieu of textbooks. The 18 July 2006 ruling by Attorney General Greg Abbott clarifies:

" A textbook does not include computer hardware and other equipment, because such hardware and other equipment is separately defined as "technological equipment" in section 31.002. Tex. Educ. Code Ann. § 31.002(1), (3)-(4) (Vernon 2006). "

The Clark suggestion that laptops are better than textbooks therefore implies that the laptops are SO MUCH better than textbooks that our district can forego state funding. She seems to suggest our taxpayers should ignore the "free money" from the legislature and instead borrow money, to be repaid locally, to supply laptops in lieu of books to our students. Griesman's point, however, is that over the 14 years our students are in the system, (pre-K thru 12) those laptops must be replaced at least 3 and possibly as many as five times. If the I&S tax rate (our "credit limit") is capped out in the first phase of the bond package, there will be no money available to be borrowed in a few years when the laptops under discussion must be replaced. The current proposal is a "one time offer."

It's also worth citing, again, the news from the LISD 2 Oct Board of Trustees The board considered purchase of "virtual library cards" for all students via the internet service "QUESTIA". The service certainly looks excellent for social studies materials -- covering Martin Luther King, for instance. However, the sales representative presenting the program to the board frankly admitted that "there's not much in our offerings for math and science teachers and students." So much for the high-school's AP math problems. I suspect each of those students now struggling to master this difficult subject without any book whatever, would welcome a set of even Clark's fifty-year-old pre-calculus textbooks.

Finally, a comparison. Suppose that as part of the 1985 LISD bond package the board had purchased for each classroom either a then-current set of encyclopedia, for about $3000 apiece, or had spent that same sum for each classroom to have a then-current IBM-XT -- monochrome monitor, dual floppy drives, no modem or speakers, and a dot-matrix printer. Which would more likely still be in use today -- now that our 1985 debt is paid off?

I commend the Today papers for sponsoring this debate and hope more citizens will participate between now and November.


Jeff Melcher
Lancaster

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This turned out to be a forlorn hope. The public gets Griesman, Clark and me. Pity the President of the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce, three-year-resident of Lancaster, former State representative (of DeSoto) and at present manager of public relations for Gallagher Construction Mangagement services Mr Fred Orr (get the facts, get ALL the facts) couldn't contribute a paragraph or two extolling the various virtues of the man he calls "arguably" the finest superintendent in the state.