Los Altos public school libraries are on their way to getting a facelift. Assistant Superintendent Richard Liewer and District Librarian Barbara Waight presented the school board with a development plan for the year 2000, setting goals and guidelines that were unanimously approved at last Monday's board meeting.
The state of California is providing much of the funding for library renovations through the California Public Schools Library Act, written in 1998, which provides four years of guaranteed funding for libraries. In a per-student breakdown, the act gives the school district $27.91 per student per year to spend upgrading library materials.
The act is an effort to raise California's school libraries to the level of schools across the nation.
"California school libraries are woefully inadequate in comparison with the rest of the nation," Liewer said. "This money has been greeted with open arms."
Waight said that "the libraries are in good shape as far as the collections are concerned," largely due to support from the Parent Teacher Association, the Los Altos Educational Foundation, and parent and corporate donations.
"It's basically the facilities we need to work on," she said.
District officials and board members all agree that the money granted for this year should be used to build the library for the reopened Covington School, scheduled to open its doors in 2001. However, the district will not be ignoring the other schools. "We've got to be careful as we open Covington that all libraries remain viable," Liewer said.
Most of the remainder of the money will be spent upgrading the libraries at Blach and Egan intermediate schools.
In addition to the funding for each school's main library, the district will soon receive money for individual classroom libraries. This funding comes as part of Governor Gray Davis' California Reading Initiative. It will provide $10.48 per child in kindergarten through the fourth grades. The district can expect to receive this money in March.
For the individual classroom libraries, teachers can choose to implement one of two plans. As described by Liewer, they can obtain a set of eight to ten books at varying reading levels to use with separate reading groups. Alternatively, they can decide to use the money to purchase copies of different books for independent reading and book reports.
These state grants, supplemented with money from the PTA, the LAEF and donations, will help the district reach the goals outlined in the School Library Development Plan.
The Mission Statement of the document outlines these goals in four broad areas:
The first is to provide a trained and knowledgeable library staff.
The second is to "provide physical access to information" through presenting organized materials on a variety of subjects.
The third is to teach each student "systematic learning activities" that they can use to gain information.
The fourth, not unlike the second, is to ensure that each library is "user-friendly" and can serve as the "media/information center of the school."
"Of course the libraries must be technological, but they still need to be regarded as places where the students enjoy reading good books," Waight said. "We cannot lose sight of the pleasure of reading."
Components of this plan involve maintaining a trained and informed staff, keeping library resources "relevant" and "appealing" and supporting various academic standards.
The staff must also collaborate with school faculty to teach library skills appropriate for each grade level.
These include "having proper library manners" at the kindergarten level, being able to locate books through alphabetizing and the Dewey Decimal Classification system in the primary grades, and using the online library database at the junior high level.
"We've got to find ways of talking with the teachers, and meeting the teachers' needs in the libraries," Waight stressed. "Some skills are taught in the classroom and then reinforced in the library."
"Our library computer system is compatible with the high schools' and the Dewey Decimal system is the same one used in university and public libraries. We are really teaching the children life-long skills."
Before Waight wrote this development plan, the district had been using a plan that was written ten years ago.
"Things have changed tremendously in the past ten years," Waight said.
"I'm pretty pleased to see how far we've come."