Image via Wikipedia
$4704
…pays for about 1/10th of one second of advertising in the Super Bowl this year.
$4704
…pays for 1.5 seconds of the US’s involvement in Afghanistan.
$4704
That’s my budget for library media for this entire school year.
$4704
That includes all audio-visual materials, books, magazines/ periodicals/newspapers, maps/globes, tapes, microfilms, and computer software for use in the library.
$4704
That’s $6.25 per student enrolled in the school last October.
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That $6.25 per student rate was set by the NY State legislature in 1999.
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US total inflation from June 2000, to June 2011 is 30.93% according to inflationdata.com
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Inflation in the rate budgeted per student 0%
$470
“Most school libraries managed to escape the economic trials of 2010 largely unscathed––with the exception of those in high-poverty areas, which saw significant declines in spending on information resources and in collection size.”
—American Library Association report on the State of American Libraries.
$4704
My school is in the poorest Congressional district in the nation.
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Perhaps I should be grateful that my budget has not gone down.
$4704
I’m not.
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Education On The Plate 
Good post.
That is terrifying.
Wow. Unbelievable. How do you do it? Is it even possible?
Compared to what we spend per intervention license, $6.25/child is a paltry sum and entirely unacceptable. We pay the vendors before we invest in our kids, schools, and communities. It’s time for that to stop.
Thanks for speaking up Deven – I hope you and your readers will join us in posting at http://occupyedu.tumblr.com to share out your challenges to the system to do better by learners and learning.
All the best,
C