The Art of the Brother-in-Law Deal

I know people make jokes about salesmen. The pinnacle is usually the used car salesman, but if you are a business person it is the insurance salesman who is the ultimate irritant. I am lucky to have the perfect comeback for that because my brother-in-law is an insurance salesman. When I need to avoid hearing all the benefits and money I can be saving by switching insurance carriers, I just explain "sorry my brother-in-law sells insurance, I can't change". It works like a charm, because everyone understands how brother-in-law deals work.

I live close to a community in the DFW metropolitan area called Irving. If you don't know Irving, you probably know Texas Stadium in Irving. It "used to be" the home of the Dallas Cowboys. Next year they are moving to Arlington to play in what is locally know as "Jerry World" Like most communities in the DFW area, Irving has it's own school district. From what I understand it is a pretty good school district and does a pretty effective job educating the kids in Irving. I know that at their magnet high school every student gets their own laptop to use and I understand they are pretty progressive about the use of technology at all the schools.

One advantage of technology and laptops and PC's in school is students don't have to lug around all those textbooks. Nowadays all the textbooks are online, along with homework assignments and class schedules and study aids. All the student needs is a laptop or PC and access to the internet. I know most of you still have back problems today from carrying around all those textbooks in high school. Plus, I will bet at some point, you had to pay for a textbook that you lost or the dog ate or the school bully stole from you because his dog ate his. Ain't technology great, no more lugging around heavy text books and our kids can walk upright.

Irving has a bit of a problem in their school district. Actually I guess most school districts in Texas have this same problem, but Irving is trying to do something about it. It seems that in Texas the school district is required to buy a textbook for EVERY student, regardless if the student actually uses the textbook or not. If a high school student can choose between carrying around textbooks or carrying a laptop and calling up the textbook online, which one do you think they will do?

Now Irving estimates they have over $4 million in UNUSED textbooks sitting in a warehouse. They would like to use the money spent on UNUSED textbooks for something else. Makes sense to me, but not to the state of Texas. The Texas Education Agency which actually funds the purchase of textbooks in this state, to the tune of $500 million I might add, says school districts are required to buy one textbook for every student. The students don't have to use the textbooks but the school district has to buy them.

You may have heard in the news that Texas governor Rick Perry is against taking federal stimulus dollars to pay out more unemployment here, because it will create a burden on Texas taxpayers to comply with the additional requirements. I wonder if he would favor burdening Texas taxpayers for extra money to buy more textbooks?

It just all sounds wrong to me, so my only conclusion is somewhere in Texas there is some powerful politician whose brother-in-law sells textbooks for a living.