SANATOGA PA – Recent jottings from a reporter’s notebook:

Where Some Of That School Tax Money Goes

Holding a lot of money.

A new detective thriller in paperback at the local bookstore retails for $7 or $8. That steamy romance read just issued in hard cover that you’ve been waiting to lose yourself in will run up to $30. Expensive? Increasingly so.

But it’s chicken feed compared to where the much bigger money is: in textbooks.

The Pottsgrove School District Board of School Directors last week (June 16, 2009) unanimously approved the purchase of hundreds of new textbooks for re-vamped science courses at Pottsgrove High School. It will pay $138 per book for “Introduction To The Human Body,” published with a 2010 date by John Wiley and Sons; $115 per copy for the 2009 edition of “Chemistry, The Central Science,” published by Pearson; and $96 a volume for the 2006 teacher edition of “Holt Environmental Science.”

The cheapest book on the list of 11 different titles costs $58. In all, the board agreed to spend $69,005 for multiple copies of most, at an average cost per title of $83.

The high school doesn’t change science texts every year. Some books this new batch will replace have been in its classrooms for many years, and are well-worn or – worse – outdated. The purchase ensures Pottsgrove’s future cancer researchers, astronauts, and molecular biologists benefit from the latest scholarly knowledge available.

And textbooks now are accompanied by a wealth of additional materials that add to their price tags. Dr. David Ramage, the district’s supervisor of secondary education and assessment, told board members that some come with DVD content to spur student thinking. Many have slides teachers can use in the classroom to guide discussion and better explain concepts.

Most even have full digital versions available online. Because textbooks are kept in the classroom when students go home, online versions give learners access to the material via the Internet from their homes. “That’ll cut down on the wear and tear some textbooks get,” board member April Kontostathis observed.

Maybe reduce future book expenses, too.

No winner here.

Needed: Spull Cheker At Trofy Shop

School board Secretary Phil Keogh reported his embarrassment last week when he learned that, during a high school assembly in which awards and presentations were made to graduating seniors and other students, engraved plaques distributed by the district bore the name Pottsgrove mispelled with an extra “T.”

As in Potts”T”grove.

Worse, Keogh told fellow board members, this was the second consecutive year in which some plaques contained spelling errors.

Red-faced administrators are checking into the problem.

Like Many Signs, This One’s Too True

Seen flashing from the electronic sign board outside the Towne and Country Ace Hardware store on Ridge Pike in Limerick (PA) Township:

Buy Local Or
Bye-Bye Local.

Related (to the Pottsgrove School Board meeting of June 16):

• Rendell Heeds Pottsgrove Demand, Sort Of
• What It Takes To Run A School District
• Store Opens At Upland; District Anticipates Revenues
• District Honors Retiring Teachers

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