Individual teachers should not sell students books, supplies, food, or anything else. The price involved does not matter. The opportunity for conflict of interest is just too great.
You want to give away books? Fine, good for you. I’ve seen teachers buy books and supplies, then give them away. It’s not uncommon.
This teacher was stupid. Not firing offense stupid, but stupid nevertheless.
The Department of Education did not supply these books. In fact, it is highly likely that Friedman asked for them and they either refused to supply them or made it so complicated that if he went through the procedure, the kids would have the books about the time the term ended, if then.
New York City's school system is famous for their "rubber rooms" where teachers who commit REAL offenses such as child molestation go to spend the next ten years or so surfing the internet, reading, playing cards or whatever floats their boat at FULL SALARY while the district goes through the union mandated termination process.
It is funny how quickly they can turn on an award winning teacher who has done nothing worse than get his kids books outside of their payola process.
Yep, the bad thing here was going around established bureaucratic procedure.
If he bought them on his own, and gave them out to the kids at no charge, wouldn’t have been a problem.
It crossed a line to then turn around and charge the students for the books. Clearly he violated established policy to do so.
And, the way things are, if you violate established policy in a bureaucracy, you are in trouble.
For “stupid” I would substitute “naive”: to think that one who was promoting dead-white-male type stuff would not receive disproportionately onerous supervision.
My long-time friend routinely used her own money for books when the state-mandated materials were inadequate.
It is certainly wiser to not charge any remuneration; it remains to be seen if it was specifically illegal in that jurisdiction.
[See Post 11 by Vigilanteman.]