Disposal of Textbooks and Other End of School Updates

Happy end of the school year! Now begins the deceptively quiet period of summer. I wanted to provide you an update on textbooks - but the main purpose of this update is to help those of you who are NEWER with what to do with all the old science or career tech textbooks.

I. General Updates on Instructional Materials

  1. PW is busy sending out your new science books, your new career tech books, & other fill-in books you may have ordered! We know that Fridays are off the table for deliveries in the summer!
  2. For those of you who break out your science deliveries to schools, Here is a document that you may wish to share or reference with your schools. It should help them with receiving and properly counting books before dispersing them. Remember that if they think there is a discrepancy, they should send that information to you to get a "district view" before you call PW to follow-up.
  3. We begin shipping ELA & Math consumables in January - but those are continuing to go out - particularly McGraw-Hill OCR. It took some time for ALL the OCR pieces & parts to arrive, so we waited to begin shipping so that you would not have backorders - which could be VERY confusing with elementary ELA!
  4. The state Social Studies & Arts Education Committees met for the first time in April, & they will begin actively reviewing submitted resources in June.
  5. Dr. Carolyn Jones from the State Dept. & I will be co-presenting at MEGA Conference in Mobile on July 17th from 8:30 to 10:00 in Room #201A in the Convention Center. We will walk through the textbook adoption process at the state & local levels - so it will be especially beneficial for those who are newer to leadership in this area. If you have CO changes this summer in curriculum or textbooks, please let me know.
  6. "Free-With" - Remember that in most cases, your free TEs come to you directly from the publishing companies. Any questions about the delivery of those should be directed to the publishing company representatives.
  7. "Online Access" - This is "granted" to you from the publishing company when we invoice you for the order.
  8. "Textbook Funds" - State Foundation funds ($100 per student) & State Supplemental Appropriation Funds (approx. $30 per student) are to be used ONLY for instructional resources for students that are adopted by the state AND adopted by your local districts. While assessments - particularly formative ones - certainly can benefit students, they are not considered instructional resources. Both state accounts for textbooks should be fully expended by Sept. 20, 2025.
  9. "Delayed Oct. 1 Billing" - Even with the significant increase in funds, many districts are using all of their state allotments for science & career tech books - & then some. PW DOES provide delayed billing options. Please feel free to contact me or Wendi Spencer in our office with any questions about what this option.
  10. REMINDER - State Supplemental Appropriations Fund Source 1772 for Textbooks: This link should help you & your CSFO should you not know about these allocations in supplemental appropriations. The memo from Dr. Mackey actually tells you what your district was allocated.

II. What To Do with Older Instructional Materials

This document is the is the legal explanation for the disposal of textbooks. But below, I'm expanding on each of the 4 numbers that are mentioned. Hopefully, this can help you with what to do in your district.

  1. Declaring surplus: This is just like your district does with old computers. "Declaring textbooks surplus" is a board action, based on your recommendation. It officially removes the books as a district asset & therefore removes them from your inventory. For example, all of your old science books should be declared as surplus (and others, as desired). This gives you some freedom to do things with them.
  2. Bid: This rarely happens - particularly in Alabama, where we are usually WAY past the 6-year contract when we are done with books. There is usually no value left when we're done. Think about it this way - If a student lost a 6- or 7-year-old social studies book, we would not charge them to replace it (where we WOULD on newer lost books). So, when we are past the 6-year contract with a book, it generally has no value left - that's 90% of the time. An exception might be...like when Biology was moved from 10th to 9th grades. Districts had to buy double the biology books for one year of transition. A district might have wanted to bid-out the extra books to a neighboring district or other private/charter schools, as they were still of value.
  3. Donate/Discard: Most of the time, no group wants older, out-of-contract textbooks. Sometimes districts keep a small amount for teachers to use as a reference (but beware of teacher-hoarders, as storage in schools is at a premium!). Some schools send some of the surplus materials home with students, particularly with the rise of summer programs. The most desirable action is to try to have them recycled. This has become increasingly challenging - at least with traditional textbooks - as the heavy covers, waxy paper, & glued binding are challenging to recyclers. I DO think consumable books or workbooks are much easier to recycle, but...in theory, there should not be many of those left over. So - this too often means that "the last resort" of "burned or buried" (ie, take them to the dump) is often what happens now. I would offer the caution to do this carefully, as you wouldn't want the uninformed public to see your district throwing books away. Finally, I suspect that that last sentence - about NOT donating to "private educational agencies" (but you COULD to "nonprofit charitable organizations") - is somewhat dated, as the line between public schools & private schools is more blurred now. Nevertheless, they generally do not want old books anyway!
  4. Documentation: My experience has been that textbook accountability came mostly from local school district auditing practices. There's not much with ALSDE monitoring on textbooks. Nevertheless, instructional materials constitute a tremendous use of taxpayer funds. The many legal steps of adopting & purchasing (local & state committee recommendations, for example..) are in place to help provide accountability for the use of these designated funds, particularly since the choosing of instructional materials - unlike other school expenditures - is not done to "the lowest bidder." So - as with all things education - keep good documentation - just in case.

As always, please email or call me with any questions - particularly process ones. Your CSRs (Wendi, Yvonne, or Tiara) are the best point of contact for specific questions about your order.

As is my usual, this post was longer than I intended. Those of you who are experienced probably did not need most of this, but - there are MANY changes in COs this season - so I hope it was of value to those folks.

Here's to an excellent summer!

-Patrick