Our Catholic K-8 in the Arlington Diocese has a library and the kids have library class 1-2 times a week. My daughter’s diocesan HS also has a library.

I would find it very unusual for a school not to have a library.

Our K-8 has a library. My kids also went to Catholic k-8s in NY and MA and those had libraries also, though I don’t think the librarian in NY was full-time, if I remember correctly.

I'm not in the DC area anymore.

Our Jesuit HS turned its library into a robotics lab. There is no library anymore. All of their textbooks are online. The lab is pretty impressive and their robotics teams wins a lot of competions.

The associated K-8 school does have a library.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, you say you are touring schools in different towns. Are these DC-area towns?

No not DC, I meant to write towns in a different area!

Ok, so maybe that’s common in your area then, if you’re finding many that don’t have a library. It’s not typical in the DC area but that doesn’t really mean anything if you aren’t in DC.

Anonymous wrote:OP, you say you are touring schools in different towns. Are these DC-area towns?

No not DC, I meant to write towns in a different area!

Anonymous wrote:Have not heard of a K-8 in archdiocese of Washington without a library.

Not in DC, different towns not in DMV

OP, you say you are touring schools in different towns. Are these DC-area towns?

Not common.

I’ll bet the school you looked at had a library at some point. The space was probably divided up and used for needed classroom space.

Have not heard of a K-8 in archdiocese of Washington without a library.

My kids PK-8 in upper MoCo has a library and librarian

Ours is fairly small (one class per grade, maybe ~200 students) and we have a pretty substantial library with a full-time librarian.

I’ve never been in one without a library.

Not common in the DC area, no.

Oh and please don’t bother responding with the “indoctrination” “Catholics don’t read” type of comments! This is a real question.

Is this common? We are touring Catholic schools in different towns and I was surprised to see the K-8 and preK-8 I looked at so far do not have libraries. One does have a large room for lounging that has lots of books and work tables, but no librarian. The other doesn’t have a library but there are classroom libraries and each elementary classroom has lots of lots of different books available for kids to read. One school seems to be struggling but the other seems to be doing fine financially and fills its seats with wealthy parish members’ kids. But neither school has a real library with librarian! Is this typical?