It's no secret that many, though certainly not all, schools and public libraries across the U.S. have substandard book collections and infrastructure. Some municipalities, sadly, have even closed their local libraries for budgetary reasons. Recognizing this tragedy, the federal government is extending a contract with a private firm responsible for selecting book titles, applying "quality assurance to printed books," and overseeing their "timely delivery to schools" as part of this ongoing educational endeavor of the Bush Administration, Exhortations has learned.
Unfortunately for American kids, all the books from this particular project are going to schools in Egypt.
According to a contracting document located via a routine search of the FedBizOpps database, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on July 26 extended for another year an existing "task order" with the Washington, D.C.-based Academy for Educational Development (AED). AED will continue to select and deliver "high quality books" to "libraries in public preparatory and secondary schools" in Egypt, the document said.
The value of this, and the previous, contract is unknown. The original task order to which the July 26 document refers could not be found, despite an extensive search of FedBizOpps by Exhortations.
