Exhausted TX Board adjourns, but Curriculum Committee levies huge fine on Houghton-Mifflin...

The decision was the remaining 6 items on the Full Board's discussion agenda can be taken up tomorrow
(Friday) during the regular meeting of the Board. The docket includes
issues such as the ongoing Reading/Literature adoption, the upcoming
Spelling/Language Arts adoption, the upcoming Science Adoption, how to
handle the 15% budget cut, and more......and the Finance Committee, which already left the main meeting to hold their committee meeting.

7:10 pm As for the Curriculum Committee, headed by Chair Barbara Cargill (R-The Faction, The Woodlands), they dug into the rules on Gifted/Talented students, the error fines publishers must pay, and testing issues.

Changes to Gifted Talented document (to update to reflect current laws and situations) approved unanimously.

Error Fines:

Harcourt School Publishers: committee members vote to fine $458K for errors in Math grades 1-5.

Macmillan Spanish Math grade 2, fined $34K.

Glencoe Geometry, fined $5K

Houghton Mifflin could be subject to $9.3M in fines for K-5 math. They've asked to provide corrected materials in Spanish for grades 3-5 in lieu of the fine (about $5M of the proposed total). Board agrees and the potential fine total is down to about $4.3M.

In some cases, errors were found in materials that nobody has ordered, so a decision is needed about whether to charge them fines. Geraldine "Tincy" Miller proposes not charging those, but charging all the remainder. It passes unanimously, and the K-5 English math and K-2 Spanish math print book fines total $2.3M. (This is by my unofficial count--it's a confusing document, given that it reflects 28 different ISBNs.) Given Harcourt's problems, that's about $3M in fines for the combined HMH company.