Monrovia Schools: $390,000 for Elementary English Books?

The Monrovia Board of Education will consider spending $390,000 to purchase the "California Treasures" English textbooks for kindergarten through fifth grade. http://goo.gl/QaT9W
Let's see, with 2,636 Monrovia elementary students as of 10/6/2010, and one book per student, that comes to $147.95 per student. Yowza! Well, come to think of it, kids are hard on books, plus there are probably some teachers' guides to go with it, so let's order half again as many books, 3,954. So, that comes to $98.63 per book.
Unless I'm missing something big, that still seems like an insane amount of money for a book.
Right now I am looking at a book I own called "World Art." It is large-format, 448 pages, printed on glossy, heavy paper, with beautifully-printed full-color images on 350 of its pages, and it is filled with intelligent prose. You can buy this book in its hardcover edition on Amazon for a (comparatively) piddly $26.47: http://goo.gl/ZLQfK
Not that I'm saying anything new, but there seems to be something seriously wrong in the world of textbooks.
- Brad Haugaard