The Truth Hurts

As Rosanne Rosannadanna used to say, "If it's not one thing, it's another!"

My coworker, Mister T (T is for techie), has just informed me that Microsoft is refunding money after losing a class action lawsuit for overcharging on pre-installed computer products. (I'll save you the gory details.) Anyhoo...our school spent money (NOT district money), to purchase the equipment that is eligible for the refund, to the tune of $27,800. That's quite a chunk of change. How nice that we will get this money and be able to look at our site and decide how best to use it to support our students and their learning!

Whoops...rewind. Uh,...turns out, the story is that the district is planning to KEEP all the money for themselves and decide how to spend it from the district level. Well, dip me in "you-know-what"! That money came out of our local site budget and should go right back!

Here's a word problem for you, if you need it spelled out again:

John has 15 marbles. He gives 10 of his marbles to Jane in trade for a Pentium Processor. John's best friend Mark also traded 10 marbles to Jane for the Pentium Processor, but discovered from a guy named Chip that Jane was overcharging and the Pentium Chip should really have cost 7 marbles. Chip and Mark start a class action suit against Jane where John will also receive any benefits from the suit. When they win, Jane sends back the marbles that she overcharged. Chip gets his, Mark gets his, but John's marbles are given to his dictating great-grandfather and John will never see a dime of it!

Our school is not the only one in this situation. In our district, the total award is $992,899.17 spread out among 30 schools. I would have never known about this if it hadn't been for Mister T drumming up support. I get caught up important television programming on the E! channel all too often. Ignorance is bliss because the truth HURTS!

My only hope is that this story turns out to be complete propaganda and is worthy of a slot on E!