Monday night, the Columbus Municipal School District Board of Trustees got the final tally of what it cost the district to replace one set of new textbooks for another.
The district managed to recover via a refund roughly $160,000 of the initial $505,000 purchase of textbooks and materials it authorized in May at the request of then interim superintendent Edna McGill.
In August, the board approved a recommendation by new superintendent Philip Hickman to buy new textbooks that aligned with the curriculum he planned to implement.
Of the original $505,000 May purchase, Hickman recommended the district keep the high school materials, which came to $144,552. Another $112,474 worth of elementary school textbooks/material were deemed nonreturnable by the company.
The CMSD sought to mitigate the blow by suggesting the textbooks not returned or those sent back to the district will be of some value. That seems a dubious claim in light of the district’s subsequent $600,000 purchase in August.
At the time of that purchase, there was no reason to believe — and certainly no reason was offered — to suggest that the new purchase would not meet all the textbook/material needs of the city’s schools.
No matter how it is parsed, this has been a fiasco of the first magnitude, beginning to end.
The board either erred in approving the first purchase or the latter. It’s difficult to argue otherwise. The accountability for that rests solely with the board.
Hickman’s handling of the matter only exacerbated the problem.
That it took six months to resolve this issue is evidence of that. Those six months were marked by inaction, obfuscation and a shifting storyline. That, for the most part, can be attributed to Hickman.
When the board first questioned Hickman on the progress he had made in returning the unneeded books to the supplier in October — some three months after the board had approved the new purchase he had requested — it was clear the superintendent had made no meaningful progress. He assured the board then that he had “marching orders” to move on the matter.
Yet it wasn’t until early December that any of the books the district hoped to return had been sent to the supplier. Hickman’s assertion that the district could expect a “100 percent return” was diminished by the caveat that it would ultimately be the supplier’s decision as to which books would qualify for a refund.
As painful as the process has been, if there is anything to be salvaged from the affair is that it should serve as a cautionary tale for both the board and the superintendent.
Of those potential lessons, perhaps the greatest are that problems should be addressed promptly and the superintendent must keep the board and community well-informed through clear communications.
Delays and ambiguity never solve problems. They only make them grow.
For the benefit of our schools, let’s hope both the board and the superintendent have learned that lesson.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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