Cottage Grove Middle School Forced to Hold Fundraiser for Library Books

From the District's Listserv:

From: "McCrady, Lori"
To: "'CGMS_News@info.sowashco.k12.mn.us'"  
Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2013 10:59 AM
Subject: Please support the CGMS library!
Starting today and ending on Friday, October 25th we’re having an online Titlewish fundraiser. 100% of the money we raise will go directly to purchasing new book titles for our school library. Schools in our district no longer receive district funding for library books, only ebooks. (Emphasis added.) We’re asking you to participate and help us raise $5,000.00. To help us meet our goal, please visit http://www.titlewish.com/104848and click the Donate button. You can also visit this site through our CGMS homepage. 

Thank you for helping us provide Cottage Grove Middle School students with the best education possible!

Lori McCrady
District 833, which is working overtime to have the citizens to not only approve a levy renewal, but also a LEVY INCREASE , has determined that new non-ebook hardcover or paperback books are unnecessary for the school's media centers, instead only providing the schools funding for ebooks.  Is this because the district is choosing to go against 94% of the district's surveyed residents who said they were against providing iPads to all students (page 11 of the survey results), by planning to give all 17,000+ students iPads over the next few years?  And where was this new budget cut  reported in the Budget Matrix? Or was the money not actually "cut" but was instead "reallocated" elsewhere? Perhaps to fund ebooks?

The district is claiming to need millions more of taxpayer money to fund more technology, while the schools' media teachers are having to resort to fund-raisers for actual books to fill their library shelves.  It would seem that the district, in the rush to "Transform Thinking Through Technology," failed to realize that some classes require actual textbooks (i.e. the AP Calculus class at WHS is currently using old, falling-apart textbooks and has problems that can't be done on an iPad) that aren't in a digital format, and likewise, some new fiction/non-fiction books are also not in digital format yet, either.  Apparently, those facts don't matter when the district administration is diving headlong into their T3 initiative regardless of what the schools really need and/or what the community wants.