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School district book buyer wheels and deals for Newberg students |
By Laurent
Bonczijk, Newberg Graphic reporter
E-mail Laurent at
bonczijk@eaglenewspapers.com
|
Terry McElligott is a
silver-haired, 40-something teacher with a strong handshake and an
easy smile. On a late June morning the history teacher is wearing a
red dress with floral motifs, and Birkenstock sandals.
Normally at this time of the year, she would be tying up loose ends
in a middle school emptied of students. Not so this year, for the
first time in 27 years she is “without kids.”
McElligott is the
curriculum director for the Newberg School District and even for a
veteran eighth-grade teacher the last few weeks have been hectic.
She has been finalizing deals with different publishers to make sure
she gets the books she wants at the price the district can afford.
That is where the fun comes in. Her father, once told her that there are
people who are happy to pay sticker price for a car and there are
those who are willing to bargain. He was one of the latter and
taught her the ropes.
When it came time for McElligott to buy her first car, she played
off three dealers in Eastern Oregon until one matched her price
point. “I have never sold a car for that low a price,” he told her.
“Years later I was doing it for my sisters,” she added.
“Some people go in and they just buy it. I would think in their
(salesperson) job, it’s more fun with people who don’t.”
For the past nine months she applied that attitude to book buying.
She said buying the books is only a small part of the job. New books
are bought on a rotating basis; changes in subject matter are made
every seven years. Her first job was to review the curriculum for
language and arts and ensure it would fit with the district’s goal
of “power standards.” Then she decided that she would align the
curriculum from kindergarten through 12th-grade to have more
consistency for students.
Then she had to sift through the dozens of boxes of books she had
received from publishers, enough to fill two rooms at the district
offices. She delivered books that fit her agenda to the proper
teachers to try out and give feedback.
Publishers, she said, send districts packages based on subject and
grade levels. In those packages are a lot of freebies. “Well,
nothing is really free because we pay for that stuff,” she adds. And
some of those freebies are never taken out of the box, she learned
in her experience as a teacher. “I figured out in my head what I
thought we really needed and where their bid should fall.”
She called back publishers and told them what part of a package she
wanted. Then she would tell them how much she was willing to pay.
“You’ve go to know what you want and what you can afford,” she said.
The district’s price limit was inflexible. She returned a bid of
$142,000 because she had told the sales person the price had to be
under $140,000. She would dream about the changes she wanted made to
the different packages and the arguments she would use to justify
her price point.
Many times she was told “we’ve never done that before,” to which
she would retort “we can do this.”
Nancy Nordquist, a sales person for Pearson Scott Foresman with 27
years experience in the book selling industry, described McElligott
as “a wonderful person to work with. She has her teachers’ interests
at heart.” |
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From June 30, 2007,
Newberg Graphic
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