Florida lawmakers are pushing to have school districts convert from traditional, bulky hardback textbooks to electronic books, available on a computer or held-held device such as Amazon’s Kindle or Apple’s iPad. But school districts are reluctant as they say, it’s too costly and doesn’t take into account students without Internet access.
The proposals in the legislature came after state education officials unveiled an ambitious plan in February to require all students in grades K-12 to use only electronic materials in the classroom by 2015.
The House version (HB 5101) requires school districts to spend 50 percent of their K-12 instructional materials budget on electronic textbooks by 2013-14 school year.
On the Senate side, a less-stringent proposal (SB 7128) authorizes a school district to designate pilot schools to transition into using electronic textbooks. Those schools would be required to spend 50 percent of their instructional materials budget on electronic textbooks.
School districts have said that the House version doesn’t give districts enough time to make the transition. The Senate version is favored by many districts because it isn’t a mandate.
Proponents of electronic textbooks say the cost will be similar to hardback textbooks because the expense of textbook development comes from the research and writing, not the publication. But there would certainly be an up-front investment required by some school districts in hardware, software and bandwidth capacity.
“It’s more than a laptop or Kindle or an iPad,” said school district lobbyist Vernon Pickup-Crawford. “It’s also having the infrastructure in place, which is the networking wiring so that if you have lots of kids online at the same time your network doesn’t come crashing down.”
School districts are lobbying lawmakers to mend the budget bills to allow for a phased-in approach.
Both the House and Senate are expected to pass their budget bills containing the electronic textbook requirements this week. Any differences will be settled in negotiations between the two chambers in the coming weeks.
The News Service of Florida
