Inequality of DCPS Libraries

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"All of the above" is a wonderful policy but sometimes you have to think of the (financial and budgetary) tradeoffs. If we focus on 'books in shelves' as a goal, then we must have full-time librarians to code, classify, sort, record them, check them out, back in and put them books back on the shelves. Not to mention you have to invest in renovating those spaces, adding shelves, and sometimes quite literally structural reinforcements to support books.

What if we could use those resources more effectively, spread them more widely, and give more kids access to more books and other information by a completely different model? Not all, but many librarians are vehemently opposed to thinking outside the (library) box. To their credit, they know that outside that box are often not certified and fully qualified subject librarians.

One thing to consideR. Let's say you have 500 dollars to spend on either buying books for students OR to build up classroom libraries OR to build up a school's library. (Obviously there are other solutions but let's pretend those are your three choices)

The the students and the teachers will both leave the school eventually taking the books with them but the money invested to library stays with the school

[Anonymous]

I'm a former dcps librarian. DCPS needs to actually fund both the librarian position and the library. In the past funding for a librarIan was optional. Some principal funded the post on with an instructional aide. Sometimes the aides did not have a Batchelor's much less a Masters of Library science. I know of aides who just played movies or had studrnts color pictures in the library. Books did not get circulated. in schools without librarians teachers and students often stole books from the library which made it difficult to rectify the records if the library and then came back into the system and had gigantic gaps in their collection.

Since I've left, Jennifer Boudrye has worked incredibly hard to get a certified educated librarian into every school I know we're not at 100% but it's much better than in previous years.


The next step is to ensure that every library has funding. in neighboring school districts the librarians can expect to get at least several thousand dollars of funding for their library. In the district you are at the mercy of your principal and how he or she wants to budget. I had a principal who would spend hundreds of dollars buying professional development materials for teachers and self help books for parents but did not spend any money on buying books for the library. Also there is no money for supplies such as bar codes or plastic wrap for books.

I was lucky to be in a library that had been renovated by Target / Heart of America so I had a lot of brand new books but when I lost books I had no way of replacing them this made me hesitent to check out books to students probably really needed them. I had very limited check out rules (2 book limit). I funded the library through donations and money from the meager profit share of the Scholastic book fair. I could have benefited from even a small budget.

If you want to donate books to a local school please do but make sure that the books are in good shape and are things that the students would want to read. I'll never forget I had this one community member donate this gigantic tome about George Washington that was written at a collegiate level and he seemed baffled as to why none of the elementary students wanted to check it out!

(Posted on my phone sorry for the typos)

[Anonymous]

Clearly you need both librarians and books. My ongoing problem continues to be that DC is investing a great deal of in education, especially per pupil compared to other school systems. Some of the problem is because it is functioning as a state and a local school system. But where is the money going if buildings aren't well maintained, schools don't have librarians, there is no citywide budget for books, and schools cringe each year at this time when their budgets come down and they can't fund important staff? I am a huge supporter of public schools but can't shake this question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hello!

It is so incredibly heartwarming to experience the outpouring of support for DCPS school libraries as we continue to build a program to serve our students and school community. Thank you!

Donations of quality children’s and young adult books will increase student access to literature in the classroom and at home. Due to the associated costs and labor to process donated books for inclusion in the library collection, book donations will either be offered to teachers to add to their classroom library or be made available directly for students to take home. Please understand that we may not be able to accept some donated items due to age, condition, or content. Please email [e-mail] if you are interested in donating books.

To support and build our school libraries, Chancellor Henderson has budgeted $20 per pupil for the purchase of library resources in school year 2015-16 (this has been in the works for more than a year). You can help support this effort by joining the DC Public Education Fund’s campaign to build the best urban school library program in the country. Please follow this link to donate http://www.dceducationfund.org, click, “Donate Now” and select, “Designate DCPS Libraries.”

Money collected will be distributed to school libraries based on the priority needs of the school library collection. The library media specialist at the school will be able to order books that meet the specific needs of their school which are processed, cataloged, and ready to shelve.

Again, we truly appreciate your support! If you are interested in volunteering in a DCPS school library, please contact me as we can always use some extra hands to help with book circulation!

Jennifer Boudrye
Director, Library Programs
Office of Teaching and Learning
District of Columbia Public Schools
1200 First Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002
O 202.442.4452
E [e-mail]

Thank you, Jennifer for posting. I really appreciate you taking the time to weigh in and letting us know what would be most helpful. I'm hoping that the links you posted here can be more widely and regularly publicized to the entire city so we can collectively make a big difference and improvement to the school libraries and really help out the schools that are in need.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Clearly you need both librarians and books. My ongoing problem continues to be that DC is investing a great deal of in education, especially per pupil compared to other school systems. Some of the problem is because it is functioning as a state and a local school system. But where is the money going if buildings aren't well maintained, schools don't have librarians, there is no citywide budget for books, and schools cringe each year at this time when their budgets come down and they can't fund important staff? I am a huge supporter of public schools but can't shake this question.

I can't shake it either, PP. It stinks of poor management at multiple levels.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hello!

It is so incredibly heartwarming to experience the outpouring of support for DCPS school libraries as we continue to build a program to serve our students and school community. Thank you!

Donations of quality children’s and young adult books will increase student access to literature in the classroom and at home. Due to the associated costs and labor to process donated books for inclusion in the library collection, book donations will either be offered to teachers to add to their classroom library or be made available directly for students to take home. Please understand that we may not be able to accept some donated items due to age, condition, or content. Please email [e-mail] if you are interested in donating books.

To support and build our school libraries, Chancellor Henderson has budgeted $20 per pupil for the purchase of library resources in school year 2015-16 (this has been in the works for more than a year). You can help support this effort by joining the DC Public Education Fund’s campaign to build the best urban school library program in the country. Please follow this link to donate http://www.dceducationfund.org, click, “Donate Now” and select, “Designate DCPS Libraries.”

Money collected will be distributed to school libraries based on the priority needs of the school library collection. The library media specialist at the school will be able to order books that meet the specific needs of their school which are processed, cataloged, and ready to shelve.

Again, we truly appreciate your support! If you are interested in volunteering in a DCPS school library, please contact me as we can always use some extra hands to help with book circulation!

Jennifer Boudrye
Director, Library Programs
Office of Teaching and Learning
District of Columbia Public Schools
1200 First Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002
O 202.442.4452
E [e-mail]

Thank you, Jennifer for posting. I really appreciate you taking the time to weigh in and letting us know what would be most helpful. I'm hoping that the links you posted here can be more widely and regularly publicized to the entire city so we can collectively make a big difference and improvement to the school libraries and really help out the schools that are in need.

Seconding the thanks. I am happy to have something concrete to do to help DCPS libraries.

[Anonymous]

Couple of thoughts having worked in a pretty under-resourced library.

-Think twice before just doing a book drive for all the excess your child has. Most libraries with their limited staffing cannot process them and don't need 20 copies of Harry Potter.

-Money is huge. It allows libraries to buy books with better binding, prepared with labeling and bar coding and shelf ready.

-Ask your member of the City Council to ask why this is not a line item in the school budgets. Ward 3 schools do better because of the book drives/fairs they have but really honestly an annual allocation of $1,000 is not unreasonable.

-At some level do appreciate that DCPS is coming clean on an issue a lot of school districts sweep under the rug.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

-At some level do appreciate that DCPS is coming clean on an issue a lot of school districts sweep under the rug.

As far as I know (at least in VA) local districts have fully funded libraries with certified librarians. Maybe other urban school districts are doing what DC has been doing, but as far as other local public school districts go, DC is way behind the curve. Until I read the WaPo article, I had NO IDEA that "the District dedicates no annual funding for school-library collections, instead relying on the largesse of parents or the kindness of strangers to stock its shelves through donations." I found this to be really shocking! It is easy to say, well, DC has great public libraries, but most elementary kids will not just go there on their own. If their parents don't take them, they will not check out books.

[Anonymous]

DCPS budget just starting providing per student library funds. One has to ask, what were they doing before?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maintaining an elementary school for just 168 kids is part of the problem. If they closed these underenrolled schools and had even enrollment numbers across elementary schools, then each school could have a librarian, a stocked library, etc. It is a huge waste of money to have an elementary school with less than 400 students.

But then that may create situations where some elementary school kids have to travel very far to get to school (more than a mile). I'm a big believer in "neighborhood" schools, especially for very young children.

More than a mile is not really a big deal to travel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

-At some level do appreciate that DCPS is coming clean on an issue a lot of school districts sweep under the rug.

As far as I know (at least in VA) local districts have fully funded libraries with certified librarians. Maybe other urban school districts are doing what DC has been doing, but as far as other local public school districts go, DC is way behind the curve. Until I read the WaPo article, I had NO IDEA that "the District dedicates no annual funding for school-library collections, instead relying on the largesse of parents or the kindness of strangers to stock its shelves through donations." I found this to be really shocking! It is easy to say, well, DC has great public libraries, but most elementary kids will not just go there on their own. If their parents don't take them, they will not check out books.

Fairfax does because it schools are huge. 600-1000 each. Who ever remarked above that it is the challenge of a school with just 160-200 students is correct. DC just has fewer children and we can have very local schools or schools that have sufficient scale to provide amenities, but probably not both.

I would like to see if we could staff some of the smaller organizations with a partnership with the public libraries. Potentially have one of their staff & collection work with smaller schools with an additional budget allocation. There is precedent in that all school nurses are actually staffed from the Children's National Medical Center.

This problem though is also affecting larger schools, Deal has like 8 books per child and they can't really accommodate more books, I think that would also apply to Wilson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS budget just starting providing per student library funds. One has to ask, what were they doing before?

Nothing. zero. Zip. Zilch.

I think dcps principals have some kind of discretionary budget for buying books that could be spent on libraries but most principals did not give any funds to the library. Mine bought a bunch of copies of self help books for parents to check out and then the parents lost the book.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maintaining an elementary school for just 168 kids is part of the problem. If they closed these underenrolled schools and had even enrollment numbers across elementary schools, then each school could have a librarian, a stocked library, etc. It is a huge waste of money to have an elementary school with less than 400 students.

But then that may create situations where some elementary school kids have to travel very far to get to school (more than a mile). I'm a big believer in "neighborhood" schools, especially for very young children.

More than a mile is not really a big deal to travel.

Given that children walk to school each day it kind of is a big deal. DC doesn't bus kids unless they have an IEP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As upsetting as this looks, and probably is, let's try to move away from "the more books on shelves the better". At universities, libraries are no longer measured by the number of books they count on their shelves but by the number of databases they offer to students. A library, at this point in time, in school or DCPL, shouldn't be measured in an antiquated fashion either. They should be(come) places of all kinds of knowledge and resources and held to those standards.

Let's say if a library has 300 books on shelves but offers all its children access to thousands of leveled volumes in each classroom offered in Kindles, Noooks, or laptops? Is that library so much worse of than one that has 3000 books sitting in shelves but no librarian or one whose main job is to teach technology? And what about those schools that don't have a central library but instead cultivate leveled classroom libraries, physical or otherwise? How do you count home and school access to RazKids in your "library sadness indicator"?

There truly is more to libraries than books at this juncture!

One of the benefits of libraries is that it gives a child access as to a variety of high quality books as well as books that match their personal interests. This helps build up stamina and motivation to read and being read to. Raz kids has its benefits but fit does not have the depth or quality to serve as a substitute

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What this library article and the recent report on at-risk funds and where they were distributed so plainly and painfully point out is the incredible disparity within the DCPS system. It is outrageous. How can the administration allow the rich schools to continue to have it all while schools in lower SES have so much less? If some schools have a librarian, and some do not, then why can't these staff be shared-- giving everyone a part time librarian?
Each school should be given an equal chance.
If Lafayette has 28,000 books, why shouldn't some of those books be redistributed to schools in need?

The system doesn't "allow rich schools to continue to have it all." The have-not schools get significantly more in per-pupil funding. The have schools make it up with fundraising. If Lafayette is anything like my elementary school, DCPS didn't pay for those 28,000 books, the parents did. The only way to eliminate inequality would be to ban fundraising, which would drive a lot of the wealthier families out of the system. It's not a simple problem.

DCPS HAS NOT VALUED LIBRARIES!!! For a LONG TIME. The books at "wealthier schools" were put their because parental involvement got parental contributions to either 1) support the library via PTA or other outside funding or 2) allocate scarce budget dollars from DCPS budget to books and librarian.

From the article, "In 2012, Henderson eliminated funding for librarians in schools that have fewer than 300 students and made the position optional for larger schools."

The graph in the article is confusing since it shows at-risk and not at-risk students' access to books in their libraries. Funding (or not) of libraries is by school, not by at-risk student. The article may be discussing 'at-risk students' and framing the question about their access to books only because there is a pot of money for 'at-risk students' and some of this could 'easily' be redirected to libraries.

It is crazy to talk about technology as a replacement for books in early childhood and elementary education. Technology costs a TON OF MONEY -- you buy the device that breaks or wears out withing 5 years and it costs many multiples of book prices. But you also need to buy the tech support to upgrade and repair the devices regularly.