[Blindmath] Blindmath Digest, Vol 51, Issue 5

[Sean Tikkun]

I have run into this steadily, and I advocate on political maneuvering right up there with self-advocacy.  Last year I went to order a book only to realize that the school was using an old version.  The newer version had already been produced.  The school however didn't have a classroom set and was waiting to upgrade.  I convinced the special education department to purchase the high school a classroom set of books so we could buy the cheaper reproduction (rather than commission a new book).  The classroom set was roughly $3000 and the braille book was roughly $3000.  The commission of the old book was estimated around $20,000.  It took 2 months of messages and meetings, but i convinced the district to save $14,000.  The main dilemma was no one knew how to move money from special education to a high school.  It was an accounting and political issue, nothing to do with education.  

With tricks like this over the last 2 years, I've estimated that I have saved our district around $50,000.  Much of which has been in flexing digital copies of books for history and english.

Still waiting for mathML and NIMAC to save the day, but it isn't impacting my daily work yet.

On Oct 11, 2010, at 7:29 AM, cnsbaker at access.k12.wv.us wrote:

> The student I work with is having difficulty getting their books for their college algebra course they are taking in high school. We knew there was going to be a textbook change (and knowing there wasn't a braille version of the previous edition either) when they signed up for this course. We got the ISBN number from the publisher and ordered the book 1 1/2 years ago.
> 
> We began receiving volumes 4 months after we replaced the order and was excited that we might actually have the testbook for the course. For whatever reason the transcribers stopped working on it. Then almost a year later, when the student began taking the course we began making calls and begging for the other volumes, which have never been finished. We have gotten enough volumes through the end of chapter 4 (this course covers 12 chapters). We have enough to get us through this week actually. 
> 
> The course is over in Dec and their college tri class begins in Jan. Of course if they cannot complete this course they cannot be enrolled in the class for next semester. By the time we get the entire set, I will have done the majority of the transcription on the textbook just so the student can keep up in class. 
> 
> I agree this is totally sickening and it is sad to say but has been the pattern throughout this students entire education, and I know it is the pattern for everyone in the area of education.
> 
> Constanza S. Baker
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Susan Mooney <susanannemooney at gmail.com>
> Date: Saturday, October 9, 2010 3:09 pm
> Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Blindmath Digest, Vol 51, Issue 5
> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
> 
> 
>> "I have a massive mid-term in Statistics on Tuesday and I just got the
>> accessible
>> version of the textbook today!"  As a professional transcriber and a 
>> former
>> teacher of the blind, that makes me sick.  I am not going to get into 
>> a
>> debate here on education, accessibility, etc. as this isn't the forum 
>> for
>> that, but ... it's sickening.  If this happened to sighted students, 
>> there
>> would be such an uproar, it would be deafening.
>> 
>> SM
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> 
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