Not only will textbooks be ready for the District of Columbia’s 55,000 public school students when they return from summer break, they’re already here, Superintendent Clifford Janey announced Monday.
More than 375,000 science and social studies textbooks arrived in the District on May 1 at a cost of more than $7.1 million, Janey said.
This is the second time in the three years that Janey has headed D.C.’s schools that books have arrived on time, and the first time in “recent history” that books have arrived before the completion of the prior academic year, officials said.
Janey credited the books early delivery to the installation of a $3 million automated textbook tracking system that officials began using last year under a centralized textbook ordering process. That system, called Destiny, has been extended to all cityschools for the 2007-08 academic year. With Destiny in place, all District schools will have the capacity to track which books are assigned to students.
“We can account for where they are, which is not really business as usual at DCPS,” Janey said.
Before Janey’s arrival, teachers were left to independently order textbooks for their classrooms, leading to confusion and delay, officials said. Even under Janey’s leadership, a gaffe in the ordering process meant some students did not have books when school started for the 2005-06 academic year, DCPS spokeswoman Audrey Williams said.
“We have done this in a very strategic way and not by accident,” Janey said.
