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>         Can any netters in inner city schools tell me how you handle
> any of these problems?

     We're not inner city (far from it) but we have 700 students grades 6-8
and the book losses can be high without a good plan. Here's what we did
to help this year. I was asked to find a computer program to alphabetize all
the students who owed fines or had book losses (also anything else they owed
for... band uniforms, calculators, you name it).
     I could have used several word processor programs, WP5.1 , etc..,
but I chose MS Word 5.0 for DOS, an oldies, but very user-friendly. I
used the alphabetize feature on the students name and a secretary and
myself typed up all the teacher's lists two weeks before school was out.
We made a separate file for each grade level. We printd each list every
day for two weeks and made copies for the teachers.
     The result was a much better recovery and payment for lost books. We
didn't have to fumble through fifty lists and you could instantly see the
worst offenders (the list would have them on there with a line entry for
each loss so one kid might have many lines showing what he owed). This
helped us concentrate on the worst offenders for phone calls to parents.


 How do you get middle school kids to care
> enough to bring back books?

Simple... involve the parents.


We (illegally) threaten to withhold
> report cards but the kids don't care about that.

The kids don't care and you're right it is not a legal ploy... however,
many schools use that bluff.



Good Luck next year!

Russell Smith
rssmith@tenet.edu


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