Three months after the Columbus Municipal School District board voted to revamp the district’s curriculum, the district is sitting on $500,000-plus worth of unused textbooks.
The issue came up during Monday morning’s school board meeting when the board attempted to pay the claims docket. Board member Glenn Lautzenhiser questioned paying School Book Supply Company for a backorder of textbooks.
In May, the school board voted to purchase approximately $505,000 worth of textbooks under former interim superintendent Edna McGill. During Monday’s meeting, it was revealed that some of those books were shipped to the district immediately, while others were on backorder.
When Superintendent Dr. Philip Hickman was appointed to the district’s top position in late July, he asked the board to approve a new curriculum for the district, including the purchase of $600,000 worth of new textbooks. The board voted to do so.
In previous interviews, Hickman said the district would sell the books that were ordered under McGill.
During Monday’s meeting, board member Jason Spears questioned why the district did not cancel the textbooks on backorder once it was clear that they would not be used.
“If it had been determined that we were not going to need the books … why did we not cancel the books so we wouldn’t have to wholesale the books and materials?” Spears said. “It’s puts us in a very complex, complicated situation…it’s just like driving a new car off the lot.”
Board president Angela Verdell told Spears board attorney David Dunn was looking into the matter. Verdell said it was her understanding that the purchase order had legal language that needed to be interpreted before the books can be returned.
Lautzenhiser then raised the question why the district had not entered into a contract with School Book Supply Company before the original textbooks were purchased.
“I am not aware that we don’t have a contract,” Lautzenhiser said. “I can’t believe that a major corporation would ship the first book if they didn’t have a contractual document that obligated us to pay for these books and all the other things that are normally in a contract. I haven’t seen it but I just cannot believe that we, or that a corporation, would operate and create an expenditure in excess of a half a million dollars without some type of contractual document.”
Board member Currie Fisher told Lautzenhiser that she was asking the board clerk to check into the matter but she did not believe the district had a contract with the book company. The board’s clerk could not verify a contract during the meeting.
The board voted to take up the matter during a specially called board meeting next Monday night.
Sarah Fowler covered crime, education and community related events for The Dispatch.
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