A few schools have started trying to go to etextbooks which is actually cheaper to check out iPads than provide paperbacks.
I'm guessing its not the same situation though?
We have online textbooks. The county polled the students' families and found that something like 95% have internet access, so they are able to justify not purchasing hard copy textbooks. The problem is, the county is huge--so the rich side of the county is just fine. My kiddos on the other hand, claim they have internet access because their cell phone can access google. There is no way they can access an online textbook from home. The school checks out netbooks to a lot of the kids so they can type their papers up at home, but it's not helpful for accessing web sites because a lot of them don't have internet access at home to use the netbook.
We had two options. They gave each teacher 30 hard copy textbooks (a class set), so we could check out those textbooks to the 30 kids (out of the 140 I teach) who I think would have the most difficult time getting online to do homework, and ask the rest of the kids to stay after school to do their homework. Option 2, we could just choose to not use the textbook. We chose option 2.
I make all my lessons from scratch, and have not opened the online textbook once. Notes, activities, homework are all made by hand and copied for the students. It uses more paper, but it allows the students to be successful, and it's working.
I got my hand slapped by the county this week though. I was forced to miss a day of school for mandatory textbook training, and interrogated on why I wasn't using it, because I'm "not preparing my students for the future" if I'm not using online textbooks and daily computers in algebra class. I call BS on that statement though--in 5 years when our kids get to college, whatever software they'd use in middle school would be outdated anyway, and these kids are great at figuring out software without any instructions. They don't need their middle school math teacher to "teach" them how to use an online textbook to be successful in life.