A dumpster full of books..... :(

I think I'll send a note to the principal that says something like:

Hi ????

blahblahblah good summer blahblahblah

I just wanted to let you know how disappointed I was when walking by the school the other day to see that the dumpsters were full of children's picture books.

Even though Mo is no longer enrolled at ???, as a neighbor to the school I'm still committed to doing what I can to help. I'll be happy to find a charity that can use the school's cast off books. I'll even pick them up and deliver them. Just let me know when the teachers clear their shelves and I'll take care of the rest.

Sincerely,

boomerang

Think your letter covers the matter.
Recognized the Scholastic cartons. When I was teaching used to order and give my students the chance to order every month. Books really accumulate. Have a feeling teachers changed rooms, or changed schools, or retired, and did a clean out before new school year . Agree that books shouldn't just be dumped, but we don't live in a perfect world...stuff happens.

Terrific, boomerang!
Good on you!
I'd be very surprised if you don't get a positive response to that.
If you don't (which I doubt) & they keep dumping books like that, then might be the time to go public.
edit: I'd be very specific about which books you'd be interested in recycling. Otherwise you could end up with quite a few out of date & unusable books on your hands!

so.

what did you do with the poo...?

If you already have a relationship with the principal, why not just contact her directly with your concerns?

any other tack risks causing her some grief, it seems to me...

That's a good point -- I don't want to find myself responsible for a gajillion old social studies books (but hey... they might actually be better than the current "correct" ones) and that sort of stuff.

you think a principal is THAT unaware of what goes on in her school??!!

keeping in mind that if confronted she would likely claim to be...

my guess is that moms and kids only want new books, not 1980's or 1990's style products, so there is no where to send these books for a reasonable cost in order to make use of them as books.

Yep. Once while in a Navy shipyard a routine check by shipyard personnel found improperly disposed radiation marker signs in the dumpster outside our boat. Turns out the lead radiology tech had decided to toss some signs even though he knew it was improper to put them in the dumpster. Do you think the captain knew he did it? I think not (especially based on the significant punishment administered.)

The (bagged) poo went into the dumpster. That's where poo goes at the school yard. There was a lot of garbage in there in addition to the books. FWIW, Oregon trash is pretty clean since the city composts and recycles everything. Poop and plastic are about all that goes in the trash.

I was planning on sending her an email. It's the first of the year so getting an appointment with her would be impossible. I don't want to make a big issue of it but I'd like to see it not happen again.

I think you might get a lot more forthright answer privately in person than you would in a printed conversation.

I've been wrong before...

I found oregon to be very clean.

I think maybe it's because nobody can get out of their car and litter while at the gas stations...

also, I read many months ago some piece which claimed that school libraries are aggressively discarding books because they are so rarely wanted by either the kids, parents, or staff. the goal is to make room for tech stuff which is wanted, and to declutter the space so that it looks modern.

i dont know that this report is correct, but it is likely to be.

That's right, ebooks are the better alternatives. I'm tired of carrying pounds and pounds of text book in me bookbag cause it makes you look like a ******* nerd.

I can kind of see that, hawkeye, but believe it or not, not everyone has a computer and the schools don't have enough computers for every child to have one to use all day. This is true even in a fairly wealthy school like Mo's old school. Mo has friends that don't have computers at home.

The school has book drives/sales at least twice a year and they are always begging for books to be donated. Each teacher puts up a list of books they'd like to receive during the sale and there is always a donation box so people can buy books for other schools.

Books aren't going anywhere soon, especially children's picture books.

The other day there was a story in the paper about a nurse who threw away a donated kidney....

Reading your posts is a complete waste of my time. I teach middle school students who are more mature than this. Even they would not find you funny. Enough. Be gone. (see sigline below)

Boomer, I would rescue those books if they are still in good shape, then donate them to a library or some program that could get them into the hands of low-income children. I don't think I'd give them back to the school. Finding them in a dumpster would have incensed me, too.

I'm taking heed of msolga's warning to not bite off more than I can chew but I'm going to try to talk to a couple of people I know today -- they'll know a group that could use the books (or future books, I'm thinking it might be too late for these books).

I want to have things lined up before I talk to the school.

The way I see it this place are too serious about every subject possible. Do you want to be serious, well the way I see it America's education system is fucked up. Saving a few books from the dumpster won't solve anything. The standard of education from K-12 on average is a joke. If you really want to do something, fire all the ******* lazy teachers who sit on their lazy bums all day collecting paychecks, and increase the salaries of teachers who do teach well. And another thing, group kids according to their ability. The problem of the school system is that it is not teaching students well, but it's more focused primarily at diagnosing, examining, drugging, and with the greatest degree of uniformity treating them in the same way one raises sheep.

a view which I am hearing more and more frequently these days...

Ya this concept of saving books from dumpsters is akin to treating gangrene with neosporin. What the public needs to do is to get to the heart of the problem and chop it off; you shouldn't be wasting your time on silly little things.

This is a thread about finding a dumpster full of books.

There are lots of threads about schools and education where you're thoughts might be taken a bit more seriously.

There are even threads about people who don't like books.

Better yet, if you don't find a particular topic interesting or worth discussing you aren't required to participate.