TASD approves over $1M in instructional materials, resources

TEXARKANA, Ark. — Texarkana Arkansas School District Board of Trustees approved the purchase of over $1 million in instructional materials and resources during a regular meeting on Tuesday evening.

The TASD Math and Science Subcommittees recommended purchasing the materials to address learning loss and provide improvements to the math curriculum.

To address these issues, the district made two large purchases:

• McGraw Hill Reveal Math Instructional materials and resources for $614,930 from the Educator Book Depository (a single-source provider), with funding coming from Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds

• Savvas Science Instructional Materials and resources for $488,170 from the Educator Book Depository, with funding also coming from ESSER funds

The McGraw materials are for kindergarten up to those in Algebra 2 classes. It is a core math program called “Reveal Math.” The instructional materials were deemed high quality by the math subcommittee members, TASD campus math teachers and Arkansas Department of Education.

The Savvas purchase is for grades 3-12. Grades 3-8 will have a comprehensive science program called Elevate Science. Grades 9-12 will use course-specific instructional materials.

The instructional materials were vetted by the science subcommittee and campus science teachers for alignment to the Arkansas standards for science instruction.

Both purchases includes hard copy student editions, teacher editions, requested labs and digital copies available for six years.

In other news from the meeting, the board approved the purchase of equipment and supplies for Arkansas High School from Magee Enterprises, Inc. in the amount of $81,676. Funding comes from the district’s magnet grant.

The equipment and related accessories are meant to allow for cross-curricular collaboration and manufacturing of large-scale products to support STEM teaching and learning. Included items are a laser engraver, vinyl cutter, FabBot desktop CNC router, wireless plotter printer, humanoid robot, plasma cutter and virtual welding simulator station.

Installation, training and Solidworks certification software for instructors and students is also included.