Dozens of text books were found in the trash at Dutch Fork High School. WACH FOX News found these items after a phone call from the South Carolina policy council. Dumping these books is not allowed by district policy. Guidelines show the district must sell or recycle surplus items.
"This was not school property, this is individual school teacher's property," says Principal Gregg Morton.
School officials say over the summer several teachers cleaned out their rooms and donated old books to a local charity. What was left over Morton says, "Got inadvertently thrown away."
A custodian tells WACH FOX News that he threw at least 100 books away. He says the books were several years old.
Older editions are still worth money and are still up for sale. We found the same editions selling for $27.50 a piece online. That's a small amount that could quickly add up since this next school year Lexington Richland district five will spend more than $12,000 per student.
"I can't sell books on behalf of the school district because they're not on the school inventory," says Morton.
According to officials none of the trashed texts are in the districts accounting system; which means it could have been a missing book from past school years that a student already paid for or the teacher brought it from another school. Still he admits nothing should have ended up on the trash heap.
"We could have disposed those in a better way or looked for another charity, which is exactly what we're going to attempt to do," says Morton.
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