by: Lauren Feiner
While Penn students might dread their weekend visits to Van Pelt
Library, it is clear from the crowded cubicles and GSRs that the University
would lose a valuable resource if its doors were closed. This is exactly the
situation in which Philadelphia elementary school students find themselves.
Because of extensive budget cuts, students are locked out of their school
libraries without access to books or trained librarians.
The School Reform Commission passed a “Doomsday Budget”
in late May last year,
in which $304 million was cut from Philadelphia schools for the 2013-14
fiscal year.
As a result, about
3,800 school employees were laid off, 24 schools were closed and money to extracurricular
programs was eliminated.
Libraries, however, have been seeing cuts for over a generation, WePAC Volunteer
Recruitment Coordinator Morgan Rogers Burns said. Under an increasingly tight
budget, chances of regeneration seem slim. “When it comes to cutting line items
for a budget, there are ways to rationalize away a librarian,” Rogers Burns
said. She stressed this was her own opinion, not the stance of her
organization.
A new Penn Libraries initiative is looking to expand students’ access to school
libraries. Ancil George , recently named the Community Outreach Librarian at Van Pelt, is
organizing efforts to get Penn students involved in expanding operations at the
library of the Lea School on the 4700 block of Locust Street. Currently, with
the help of a volunteer-based nonprofit called West Philadelphia Alliance for
Children, the library is open on Wednesdays and Thursdays to students in
kindergarten through second grade . George hopes to open the library for more days a week and to
more grades, since the school serves children through eighth grade.
Rogers Burns and other advocates for school libraries argue that
there are many things
that a school library provides that can’t be substituted. “The main thing that a
library allows students to do is self-direct their own learning,” she said. She
pointed out that although this might be possible in a public library, young
students rely on adults to take them to these facilities, and classroom
libraries simply don’t have as wide of a selection of books as large school
libraries do . “If it’s
not happening at the school, there’s no promise or guarantee that it’s going to
happen outside of school,” she added.
Studies also show that students who don’t have this access to
books and reading education are less likely to graduate high school.
A 2011 study by
Donald Hernandez found that, of 4,000 students tested, 23 percent of third-grade
students below National Assessment of Educational Progress reading standards
later dropped out of high school. Only nine percent of third-grade students who
had basic skills in reading, and only four percent of third-grade students with
skills rated “proficient” dropped out of high school. A 2013 research update
published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private philanthropic organization
which advocates for disadvantaged children, concluded that studies continue to
support the hypothesis that third-grade reading proficiency may predict
graduation rates. As a result, WePAC and Penn Libraries is currently focusing on
granting lower elementary school grades access to the library at Lea, although
they hope to expand access to older students if given the proper resources.
WePAC and other community groups involved in school libraries and
reading programs are also working to get students enthusiastic about reading.
“In elementary school we would go to the library, and it was this great exciting thing
... it was the highlight of our week,” College junior Katelyn Behrman
, a co-director of the
Penn Reading Initiative, remembered. She has noticed throughout her involvement
with PRI, in which members tutor elementary school children once a week, that
without the drive for reading that a library can encourage in students, they
sometimes treat the subject like geometry, thinking, “‘When am I ever going to
use reading?’” she said.
“If a kid is struggling with reading in first grade, in four to
five years, that gets to be a kid who thinks that school is not for him because
it’s too hard,” Kate Mills said. Mills organizes the Book Choosing program at Lea
coordinated by Garden Court Community Association, during which each April, students get to
pick out their own books to keep, and start or add to their own home libraries.
Dylan Vizzachero , a College senior who volunteers at the Lea library once a week
through WePAC, recalled the connection he felt with a student at Lea when the
student confided in him that neither of his parents could read. Vizzachero
assured him, “Now you’re here ... maybe one day you can read to your parents.”
“Until the school district comes and takes this off our hands,
we’ll just keep opening libraries,” Rogers Burns said. So far, her organization
has reopened 12 school libraries for one to two days a week. If the Lea library
opens for more than two days a week with the help of Penn volunteers, it could
become a model for the rest of the schools that WePAC works in, Rogers Burns
said.
“All we can do as an institution is provide Band-Aids
,” said College senior
Kate Herzlin , the
outreach coordinator at the Kelly Writers House . “But we can’t stop the bleeding.
We can only cover it
up.”
from: The Daily Pennsylvanian
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