The Florida Senate

233.25  Duties, responsibilities, and requirements of publishers and manufacturers of instructional materials.--Publishers and manufacturers of instructional materials, or their representatives, shall:

(1)  Comply with all provisions of this section.

(2)  Deliver specimen copies of all instructional materials upon which bids or proposals are based to each member of a state instructional materials committee. At the conclusion of the review process, manufacturers submitting samples of instructional materials shall be entitled to the return thereof, at the expense of the manufacturers; or, in the alternative, the manufacturers shall be entitled to reimbursement by the individual committee members for the retail value of such samples.

(3)  Submit, at a time designated in s. 233.14, the following information:

(a)  Detailed specifications of the physical characteristics of such material. The publisher or manufacturer shall comply with such specifications if the material is adopted and purchased in completed form.

(b)  Written proof that the publisher has provided written correlations to appropriate curricular objectives included within applicable performance standards provided for in s. 229.565.

(4)  By a date set by the Commissioner of Education for the year that a committee is considering a specific academic area for adoption, each publisher or manufacturer shall submit to the committee a written description of how materials meet the specifications and criteria developed by the commissioner.

(5)  Make available for purchase by any district board any diagnostic, criterion-referenced, or other tests that they may develop.

(6)  Furnish the instructional materials offered by them at a price in the state which, including all costs of transportation to their depositories, shall not exceed the lowest price at which they offer such instructional materials for adoption or sale to any state or school district in the United States.

(7)  Reduce automatically the price of such instructional materials to any governing board to the extent that reductions are made elsewhere in the United States.

(8)  Provide any instructional materials free of charge in the state to the same extent as that received by any state or school district in the United States.

(9)  Guarantee that all copies of any instructional materials sold in this state will be at least equal in quality to the copies of such instructional materials that are sold elsewhere in the United States and will be kept revised, free from all errors, and up-to-date as may be required by the Department of Education.

(10)  Agree that any supplementary material developed at the district or state level does not violate the author's or publisher's copyright, provided such material is developed in accordance with the doctrine of fair use.

(11)  Not in any way, directly or indirectly, become associated or connected with any combination in restraint of trade in instructional materials, nor enter into any understanding, agreement, or combination to control prices or restrict competition in the sale of instructional materials for use in the state.

(12)  Maintain or contract with a depository in the state.

(13)  For the core subject areas specified in s. 233.34(2), maintain in the depository for the first 2 years of the contract an inventory of instructional materials which is sufficient to receive and fill orders.

(14)  For the core subject areas specified in s. 233.34(2), ensure the availability of an inventory sufficient to receive and fill orders for instructional materials for growth, including the opening of a new school, and replacement during the 3rd and subsequent years of the original contract period.

(15)  For all other subject areas, maintain in the depository an inventory of instructional materials which is sufficient to receive and fill orders.

(16)  Accurately and fully disclose only the names of those persons who actually authored the instructional materials. In addition to the penalties provided in subsection (19), the Commissioner of Education may remove from the list of state-adopted instructional materials those instructional materials whose publisher or manufacturer misleads the purchaser by falsely representing genuine authorship.

(17)  Notwithstanding s. 233.115(3), beginning with the 2002 adoption cycle, implement a pilot program to provide opportunities for at least one school district, as determined by the state instructional materials committee in consultation with the publishing industry, to order customized materials adopted in one or more of the core subject areas of mathematics, language arts, social studies, and science. As used in this subsection, the term "customized materials" means portions, sections, or chapters of state-adopted instructional materials which may be provided in electronic format, printed on demand, or reproduced using other innovative practices that allow for customization as determined by the publisher and the school district.

(18)  Grant, without prior written request, for any copyright held by the publisher or its agencies automatic permission to the Department of Education or its agencies for the reproduction of textbooks and supplementary materials in braille or large print or in the form of sound recordings, for use by visually handicapped students or other students with disabilities that would benefit from use of the materials.

(19)  Upon the willful failure of the publisher or manufacturer to comply with the requirements of this section, be liable to the Department of Education in the amount of 3 times the total sum which the publisher or manufacturer was paid in excess of the price required under subsections (6) and (7) and in the amount of 3 times the total value of the instructional materials and services which the district board is entitled to receive free of charge under subsection (8).

History.--s. 725, ch. 19355, 1939; CGL 1940 Supp. 892(237), 8115(13); s. 15, ch. 59-282; ss. 15, 35, ch. 69-106; s. 10, ch. 69-402; s. 137, ch. 71-136; s. 11, ch. 74-337; s. 1, ch. 77-91; s. 1, ch. 77-174; s. 3, ch. 77-358; s. 8, ch. 80-125; s. 139, ch. 81-259; s. 71, ch. 84-336; s. 6, ch. 89-189; s. 12, ch. 91-182; s. 12, ch. 94-303; s. 8, ch. 97-285; s. 40, ch. 99-398; s. 12, ch. 2000-291.