New York Dept. of Education Approves $30 Million/3 Year Contract With Amazon.com, Read the Authorization Doc

Yesterday, the New York City Dept. of Education approved a $30 million/3 year contract with Amazon.com to supply an online storefront for ebooks/e-textbooks.
From Engadget:

With the new contract, New York City schools will invest in electronic formats (and save precious locker space) by accessing materials through a private marketplace similar to what Amazon has rolled out to colleges and universities in the past. While this deal only covers the content, and not the hardware to read it on, the texts will be available on a range of devices from laptops and tablets to e-readers and smartphones.

Available on pages 1-5 of this document (also embedded at the bottom of this post) from the NYC Dept. of Education web site is the authorization form for the deal providing a lot of detail.
Note: While we don’t have a confirmation from the NYC Dept. of Education what you read in the doc was actually approved yesterday you will see that the title of the PDF includes the word “updated” and yesterday’s date, April 20, 2016, is part of the url. The document was also found on a Dept. of Education server. More if/when we hear back.
The NYC Dept. of Education media relations office has let us know that the authorization document that we’re sharing is what was approved yesterday.
Finally, Amazon first tried to get this deal approved last summer but failed after the National Federation For the Blind raised concerns about accessibility issues. More here.

New York City Dept of Education / Amazon Authorization Document For Online E-Book Storefront by LJ’s infoDOCKET

Filed under: News