Posted by aoebpas, a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on Mar 22, 2011 at 10:19 am

"Adoption of English books at Palo Alto High School - Web Link"

Dune?! Really? I must be so out of touch.

You can download "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" for free. Why is this so much more expensive than the other books?

Posted by huh, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 22, 2011 at 10:35 am

The DEATH of Ivan Illyich? Are we sure?

Posted by More-Money-Down-The-Rabbit-Hole, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 23, 2011 at 8:47 am

The Death of Ivan Iyich:

Web Link

Yep .. it can be found on-line in various formats.

This is another example of how clues school administrators can be about the shift towards digital information, and/or how much they enjoy spending the taxpayers' money.

These books will disappear in a few years. E-books will stay around for ever. Even if there are downstream charges for new e-formats, the time, effort and space required to manage/store these e-texts far outweigh paper books.

This shift in awareness needs to be driven by Sacramento. Local schools see themselves in terms of "how much money can we spend", not "how little". That change needs to be driven at the State level.

Posted by Concerned Parent, a member of the Palo Verde School community, on Mar 26, 2011 at 8:38 pm

I read the comments about this book, and there was a warning saying that it is a very depressive book. Our kids do not need more depression. They had enough with the suicides. I was going to speak up at the meeting abut the books, but I waited til almost 11:00 pm, and left because they were not addressing the issue yet. Hope they did not choose this one. I the board went for it, hope they have enough psychologist available to help them deal with their feelings.