Jim Baird: “First of all I was told of one school district that had scheduled to purchase new textbooks for their kids. These were…”

“First of all I was told of one school district that had scheduled to purchase new textbooks for their kids. These were not because they just were whimsically buying unnecessary books. I saw the books that they were using. These were books that were almost a decade old. As you can imagine after that much use, the binders were torn up. The books were really not serviceable, were not up to date. But because they could not afford to pay their energy bill, these school districts were having to forgo the purchases of new textbooks. In addition to that, I visited some of the classrooms. Some of the classrooms were functioning with only half of their lights on and the kids were literally told you need to wear extra sweaters and coats to school because we cannot afford to heat your classroom because of these energy rates.”