Fixing the School Budget Crisis

I can't help but notice the current crisis in our public education system here in Ontario. Our government needs a balanced budget, and is looking at ways of cutting costs. The current strategy is to save money at the expense of the teachers union's ability to negotiate a contract. I believe there are greater savings to be had, and it has nothing to do with cutting teacher's rights. It has everything to do with pulling the school boards out of the dark ages and embracing technology at a time when technology has made things extremely cost-efficient. Specifically, I'm talking about text books.

Flashback to the 80's

The future from the Commodore 128 manual

When I was a student in the 1980's, I had a Commodore 64 system. Computer technology was moving at a fast and furious pace, and I witnessed its introduction into the classroom. Companies like Commodore would offer deep discounts to school boards, sometimes at a loss, just to get their computers in front of students knowing full well that students learning on their technology would later become customers. Word processors and dot matrix printers made it much easier to write essays. I watched as a light pen was demonstrated in our drafting class. We learned the fundamentals of computer programming. I carried at least one 5 1/4" floppy disk in my binder at all times, often imagining what life would be like for students beyond the year 2000. Why would we bother with textbooks and notebooks, when that content could be easily stored and accessed on very small, lightweight floppy disks? There would be no risk of damaging an expensive textbook; if a disk got damaged, the school could simply create a new copy. This notion excited me so much, I demanded this sort of change back then. I came to understand that the technology wasn't quite yet mature, and that many students could not afford a home computer, nor could the school board afford a computer at every desk, but I took my own step into the future by ensuring all of my homework assignments and essays were done on my Commodore 64.

It's 2012, not 1912

Welcome to 2012. The technology has matured. These days, it's expected for assignments and essays from students to be completed on a computer system. Many text books can fit on an SD card much smaller and much more durable than a 5 1/4" floppy disk. The power of an entire computer system dedicated for reading these textbooks has been reduced to the modern eReader; a device which can cost less than a high school text book. These devices can establish a wireless connection to a global network of information. Textbooks can be stored efficiently in digital format, and can be updated at any time with minimal effort.

Weighing an average textbook

When we look at school boards in 2012, we discover that they are still stuck in the 1900's when it comes to textbook material. These textbooks represent a significant expense. Textbook publishers don't give schools the discounts that companies like Commodore did. It's not uncommon for a single textbook to cost an average of $75. Multiply this in a class of 25 students, and each textbook represents an expense of $1875. Now, multiply this by the number of subjects taught: Math, physics, chemistry, biology, history, geography, English, French; seven right off the top of my head, and we're at $13,125. The semester school system cuts this to four textbooks per student per semester, reducing this expense to $7500. Add in the cost of shipping, which is significant because these textbooks aren't light. If we assume an average textbook weight of 884 grams, multiplied by 25 students across four subjects, we're at 88.4 kilograms. At Canada Post's current most economical shipping rates, this could cost anywhere between $75 and $110, depending on how far these texts need to be shipped. Taking an average for shipping costs, a class of 25 students being taught with seven textbooks would cost $7592.50, or $303.70 per student.

Let's look at the way it ought to work in the modern age. Consider that the current eBook manufacturers would likely be willing to give school boards discounts to get their readers in front of students, for the same reason Commodore did in the 80's. Recently, Kobo discounted their Kobo mini from a retail price of $80 to $50 for Cyber Monday. For this exercise, I'm going to assume that Kobo might prefer to get the larger Touch in front of students, which normally retails at $100, so I'll set a target cost at about that of an average textbook: $75. For 25 students, this represents a cost of $1875. The textbook manufacturers typically offer a 60% discount for eBook versions of their texts, but I think we can do better. Now that the door is open to digital publishing, I believe the school board should be able to negotiate and acquire textbooks for an average cost of $20 each, representing a cost of $2000 for 4 e-texts per student per class of 25. The Kobo Touch weighs 185 grams, so 25 of them would weigh a mere 4.625 kilograms, putting the cost of shipping of 25 of them at between $9.24 and $14.12, depending on where they're going in the country. Using the average of $11.68, we arrive at a total cost of  $3,886.68, or $155.47 per student. That's nearly half the expense of traditional textbooks.

Adding up the savings

The Kobo Touch

According to the Ontario Ministry of Education, there were 711,345 secondary school students in Ontario secondary schools in 2010-2011. If my estimations are reasonably accurate (and I believe they are), and assuming a 5 year cycle for text books, the text book portion of the annual budget would be around $43.2 million for secondary school students, assuming that each high school student will require 4 textbooks per semester for their studies.

Assuming that each of the 711,345 students will require an e-reader that will be replaced after 5 years, the cost of the e-reader at $75 each plus shipping would represent a $10.74 million dollar annual expense. Assuming that half of the e-textbooks would never need to be replaced because the content would not change for that subject, a one-time investment of $28.5 million would pay for sufficient quantities of these, which could be reasonably budgeted over a 20 year cycle (to allow for updates to accommodate modern language use), representing an expense of $1.42 million per year. If the other two books per semester are updated in 5 year cycles, they would represent an expense of $5.7 million. This would put a projected budget for e-reader based textbooks at a total of $17.86 million per year. The savings represented in this scenario would be $25.34 million per year.

There are a number of other benefits to switching to e-readers in our schools. Number one, our kids won't need to lug spine-twisting heavy backpacks back and forth to school any more. These e-readers could easily be integrated into the school library, vastly expanding the selection a school would normally offer. This would also translate to significant savings in the school library side of the budget. Since there would not need to be as much room required to store books, more space would be made available to provide students with places to study and do work. E-books have been proven to encourage people to read more. Then there is the expense of storing and managing traditional textbook material; a single device like an e-reader would make this process much easier. E-books have been proven to be much better for the environment when compared to paper based books. The use of this technology would better prepare our children for the modern world. I cannot think of a single disadvantage that isn't outweighed by any of these advantages.

Conclusion

Clearly, having our school boards switch to e-books represents significant savings and advantages that cannot be ignored. We taxpayers need to demand that our school boards catch up to the modern age and provide our kids with the best education for our dollar, and a big part of that strategy is through the adoption of e-books and e-book readers.