How long are public school parents gonna take this?

By the time Loryn Kogan got out of the New Trier Township High School Bookstore in August, the bill was nearly $800 for her two sons’ textbooks–materials that are free to students in most states.

What disturbed the North Shore mother the most, however, was that she later found the same books at Amazon.com for nearly $200 less. She quickly bought the books online and returned the others to New Trier.

Kogan didn’t know it, but the district contracts with a private company to run its bookstore and allows the firm to mark up new books by 20 percent over cost.

The contract is unusual because private booksellers usually are found on college campuses. But markups as high as 25 percent are not uncommon in some of Illinois’ largest public school districts, a Tribune investigation has found.

And it gets worse.

Across Illinois, students are resorting to duct tape and rubber bands to hold together decrepit textbooks. Other books are so woefully out-of-date they don’t teach fundamentals such as the fall of Soviet communism, a three-month Tribune investigation has found.

A survey of 50 districts of varying wealth and size shows public schools are failing to provide the most basic tool of learning: a current book in good condition.

Nearly 80 percent of districts surveyed are using textbooks in a main academic area that are out-of-date–at least 8 years old. About 22 percent of districts have books at least 15 years old.

Some schools have too few books to go around, forcing students to share and limiting teachers’ ability to assign homework.

Shortages and old books, however, hardly register in Springfield, where lawmakers decide how much to spend on books.

Jesse Ruiz, chairman of the Illinois State Board of Education, which advises lawmakers on the budget, said he didn’t hear any complaints about textbooks in hearings earlier this year.

But Maureen Waters, a teacher at Richards Career Academy High School on the South Side, told the Tribune that her contemporary history class uses a 1988 text that ends with the Reagan presidency.