State of Florida sues textbook publishers

The state of Florida has filed a lawsuit alleging a pair of textbook publishers overcharged local school boards for materials.

According to the Office of the Attorney General, the lawsuit accuses McGraw Hill and Savvas Learning Co. of “systematically overcharging Florida school districts for instructional materials in violation of state law and the Florida False Claims Act.”

The suit, filed Tuesday in Leon County, claims the publishers violated a state law that mandates the price of textbooks must be automatically discounted to match the best price offered anywhere else in the country. The state says Savvas and McGraw Hill knowingly violated the law charging certain school districts more than the lowest price offered elsewhere.

A Tuesday afternoon press release from the governor’s office says the Osceola County School District was overcharged more than $279,000. And that a textbook sold at a discount to Miami-Dade County Public Schools was sold at a higher price to nine other districts, leading to an overcharge of more than $250,000.

A Savvas spokesperson says in a Tuesday afternoon email that the company “has policies and procedures in place to comply with applicable statutes governing the procurement of instructional materials.”

“We have always been, and continue to be, committed to complying with all laws and regulations pertaining to the sale of our instructional materials. We never charged Florida school districts more than the state contract price,” the spokesperson writes.

“We will not publicly comment any further on this litigation and will defend our company vigorously against the allegations made by the Florida attorney general.”

A statement from a McGraw Hill spokesperson echoed the sentiment.

 "We believe the AG’s claims lack factual and legal merit on multiple grounds," the spokesperson writes. "We plan to defend our position vigorously."

This is not the first time the issue of publishers overcharging school districts has come up.

On May 5, 2022, Tallahassee law firm Komisar-Spicola, which represented an anonymous whistleblower, sent a letter to the Florida Department of Education and the Office of the Attorney General saying Lee County schools were overcharged by $842,703 for kindergarten through fifth grade English language arts adoption materials.

The school district investigated and about 15 days later issued a statement saying it paid the correct amount for the materials.

But the whistleblower’s complaint said a search of purchase orders found “a potential overcharge to the state of Florida of nearly $2.4 million” just on English language arts materials for elementary school students. This happened in seven out of Florida’s 67 school districts, according to the 2022 complaint.