East Marion Elementary School in Silver Springs, FL.

Starting this fall, all of the Marion County Public School’s remaining 15 certified media specialists support two schools each. Each school has their librarian on site for two days, with the third day handled as a flex day, meaning librarians can spend the time at either school. The arrangement has taken adjustment for librarians trying to juggle two separate spaces since classes started August 19—but also for students who now have considerably less library instruction.

“It has been very difficult because of sharing schools,” Miriam Needham, the district’s coordinator of library media services, tells School Library Journal.  “It’s not really possible to have an effective program when you’re not there five days a week.”

The new schedule started for some school librarians in the district three years ago, Needham says. As librarians retired or moved away, their positions were frozen, and other librarians were assigned their elementary school campuses. Seven school librarians had already been sharing 14 schools even before the start of this new fall term, Needham notes.

This latest shift in how school librarians were assigned schools started in May, when Superintendent George Tomyn announced that the district was facing a $29 million budget shortfall. That led to 261 layoffs across Marion County. School librarians kept their jobs in the middle and high schools, but lost their clerks and assistants—positions that still remain at the elementary school level, as they help to maintain the library by checking books in and out.

“But that’s really all she can do,” says Susan Dunn, a certified library media specialist at East Marion Elementary School and Anthony Elementary School, of her assistant.

Dunn, who was the full-time librarian at East Marion for 21 years, now spends Wednesday through Friday at that campus with its 700 students, and just Monday and Tuesday at Anthony Elementary with its 350 students. In her 22nd year as a school librarian, Dunn has now jettisoned story time, much of her research lessons, and collaboration time with teachers.

“What I really crave is to be able to have a closer relationship with the kids,” she says. Because when they don’t see me, they don’t know me, and I don’t really know them.”

Anthony Elementary is in its fourth year of having a shared librarian—a different media specialist each year. Dunn is the fourth, and says she is having a hard time getting to know the students and staff, as she’s not as integrated into the curriculum as she would like to be.

“They may be a little gun shy,” she says. “There is a whole group of students I haven’t been introduced to because I’m not there when they come to the library. There’s an assistant checking out books. They come for 20 minutes, and out they go.”

Needham says that the administration’s plan is to restore the cut positions, and not permanently leave the sharing as it is. But that all depends on funding, she says.

In the meantime, librarians like Dunn will continue to set forth twice a week to different school sites, trying to help students at both. Sometimes that means leaving emails unanswered—there were more than 1100 that were unanswered the last time she checked her account. And even as she forges back and forth she knows she and her students aren’t the only one adjusting.

“This is really difficult for the library assistants because they have to put up with another new person, a new personality,” says Dunn. “At Anthony I moved all books from one side to another, moved bulletin boards around, threw things out. The poor assistant is so stressed because the last three librarians did the same thing. I feel bad about it even though I keep moving things around and throwing things away. But that’s a phenomenon that’s happening all over the county.”

According to the report, prosecutors allege that Long Beach book buyer Corey Frederick recruited two librarians—Veronica Clanton-Higgins, a librarian in the Lynwood Unified School District, and Shari Stewart, a librarian in the Inglewood Unified School District—plus a campus supervisor, a former warehouse manager, and nine others to allegedly steal textbooks in literature and language arts, economics, physics, anatomy and physiology from schools in Los Angeles, Inglewood, and Bellflower from 2008–2010. Prosecutors allege that the participants stole at least 7,000 textbooks from the Los Angeles Unified School District alone, although they could not confirm how many in total were stolen.

Prosecutors allege that ringleader Frederick sold both new and used books through intermediaries to various textbook distributors—including Amazon, Seattle book distributor Bookbyte, and Follett Educational Services—and, in some cases, even sold books back to the institutions from which they were originally stolen weeks before.

Prosecutors uncovered the scheme after Inglewood Unified School District police notified prosecutors of an alleged embezzlement in their district, according to the report, which notes that Frederick is charged with 12 counts of embezzlement and 13 counts of offering a bribe. The individual school employees face charges of embezzlement and accepting a bribe.

San Diego’s new 400,000-square-foot Central Library.

Imagine a school library bigger than the school it supports—with an auditorium, homework center, and a 6,000-square-foot teen room where hundreds of iPads and computers are at students’ disposal. That’s the reality for 9th and 10th graders at San Diego’s new e3 Civic High School, a public charter school literally inside the recently completed 400,000-square foot, $185-million Central Library downtown.

“Where could you possibly get a school where you can introduce bibliographic instruction in your curriculum and also decide how their information gathering will be,” says Marina Claudio-Perez, youth services coordinator for the San Diego Public Library’s new Central Library, which is set to open its doors on September 28. “We have a captive audience.”

Indeed, San Diego’s educational, library, and philanthropic power brokers designed the scenario for this result. San Diego approved a 40-year, $20 million lease for e3 Civic High’s use of the 6th and 7th floors in the new building, says Mel Katz, chair of the San Diego Public Library Foundation, executive officer for e3 Civic High Board of Directors, and owner of Manpower Staffing Services of San Diego.

Future students will also have a voice—giving input in how the library will be integrated into their studies, says Claudio-Perez. “The mapping of the service for them is going to be defined by the students,” she says. “We will sit down with them, my teen librarian and guidance from the teachers.”

The new library includes a 6,000-square-foot teen room.

While 9th and 10th grader make up the first year’s student body at e3 Civic High School, the campus will expand over the next two years, eventually reaching the 12th grade to include 530 students. All will have access to the library’s sculpture court, art gallery, and even a special events room that can handle 400 people, says Katz, larger than the entire student body to start. The library’s resources of more than 1,000,000 books, DVDs, and CDs will also be at their disposal—two-thirds of which had been stored in the former Central Library basement for lack of space, he adds.

“It’s unbelievable synergy to have the school there for the library people,” says Katz.

With e3 Civic High opening its doors on Sept 3—about four weeks before the library opens it doors— its 260 new students have already made use of some of the facilities, including a morning kick-off in the 350-seat standalone auditorium, with breakfast in the courtyard. Students will continue to be encouraged to not only use the library, among other downtown civic resources, but volunteer as well, acting as mentors to younger students.

The new library’s teen room overlooks downtown San Diego.

Although the school lacks a dedicated certified media specialist (students will have to share staff librarians with the rest of the library’s patrons) there is a dedicated teen librarian, a manager for the children’s space, plus staff for the homework center.

The library is also working with adult volunteers so staff can have more direct time with patrons, says Marion Hubbard, senior public information officer for the San Diego Public Library.

Teachers and librarians have already started collaborating about how they can build synergy between the two. Claudio-Perez note’s that the high school’s humanities teacher has just inquired how the game room could be tied into a writing lesson, and she expects other curriculum connections to happen naturally. She knows this will present both a challenge and an opportunity for both parties—and particularly students.

“For many years we have battled against how schools and libraries have tried to have a good relationship,” she says. “But I think this will be beneficial not just for the students and the school, but also the library.”

I developed a series of statistics-based math problems that I post each month at school and online. Unlike other schools where teachers feature a math problem of the week, my library has full ownership of this program—and the students clamor for it.

Now each month when I post our library statistics—such as how many books were checked out, how many books were overdue, which of the various genres were checked out, and so on—students also have a related Math Stats Challenge to look forward to, with questions tailored to each grade level. The word problems specifically reflect the kind of math each grade is learning at the time they are learning it, using the same language, types of numbers, and word problem formats they are studying.

For example, a Kindergarten math problem—probably one of the most fun for me to create because they often have pictorial representations—might look like this: Over the break, Mrs. Lambert read 10 books. She only liked 6 of them. How many books did Mrs. Lambert not like? Kindergarten students can draw a picture or use a manipulative to help them solve the problem.

A third-grade word problem might look like this: Mrs. Lambert is organizing some new books for a display. She has 12 shelves on her bookcase. She wants to have 9 picture books and 11 fiction books on each shelf. How many fiction books will she need altogether?

My first step in creating the program involved going to our fifth-grade math teacher for advice. She suggested I consult our district’s curriculum documents for each grade level in crafting my questions, which I used to model. I also double-check that my problems are consistent with what students are learning by running them by teachers in each grade level at our school. The teachers solve the problems and share with me different strategies students can use to tackle them.

To kick off the program, I asked our administration for one of the unloved bulletin boards in the cafeteria. I printed my world problems on a poster maker so that they’d be big enough for kids to see while eating lunch, and my library aide put up the posters for our inaugural display.

I also take photos of the problems and post them on my school library website, both on the main page and under the “programs” category, so that students can access the questions anywhere. Students can enter the challenge each month via forms that are available in the library, from teachers, and on our library site. I designed the forms to reflect the format of the worksheets students use in the classroom. Students can submit their entries directly to the library, where I have a designated shelf for them.

Some teachers have also created Library Math Stats Challenge stations in their classrooms where the kids can solve the problems; the teachers then return the problems to me at the end of the month. I don’t allow students to submit their entries online, however, since I need to see their work written out.

On the last day of each month, I pull all the entries, grade them, and record the student names into a Google Spreadsheet. Kids who solve the challenges receive a coupon worth an extra checkout in the library. My aide preps the coupons for students and puts them in their teachers’ boxes.

At the end of the year, I recognize students whose entries from five or more months were correct as “Math Stats Champions.” My “Ultimate Math Stats Champions” have solved every month’s problems correctly. I give out recognition of achievement certificates and, thanks to a generous donation from our local Jack in the Box restaurant, certificates for a free combo meal and shake.

A year in, my monthly Math Stats Challenge is a beloved aspect of our school. Not only does it make math part of the library, it fosters math skills among the dozens of students who dig in each month to solve the problems. Why? They’re fun.

There’s no pressure or requirement to do the problems, and maybe that’s part of the appeal. I love that I’m helping to boost math skills while also bringing kids into my library orbit. The program is a great way to connect the library with the math that’s happening in the classrooms. It cost next to nothing to create. Who knew that library stats and math could be so much fun?

From the SLJ and LJ archives, the varied list below includes recent feature articles, recommended book lists, and recommended digital resources on the history of September 11 for all ages (including books on helping young children explore hard topics), plus resources that explore the political landscape since that day for adults.

FOR CHILDREN

Not Fade Away: Ten years after 9/11
By Frances Harris. August 1, 2011. SLJ.
How do you teach kids about a tragedy they can’t remember?

Ten Years After: Interview with Don Brown
By Rocco Staino. September 7, 2011. SLJ.
SLJ talks to author-illustrator Don Brown about America Is Under Attack (Roaring Brook, 2011).

FOR ALL AGES

Straight to the Source
By Frances Harris. July 26, 2011. SLJ.
A collection of 9/11 resources for all ages, including official sites and archives.

FOR OLDER TEENS AND ADULTS

Pictures of 9/11
By Martha Cornog. August 17, 2011. LJ.
A dozen graphic novels exploring memories of the day, from a variety of viewpoints.

9/11 Resources
By Joyce Valenza. August 25, 2011. SLJ.
In this NeverEnding Search blog post, Valenza offers a host of digital resources.

Internet Archive Launches Site Dedicated to 9/11 TV News Coverage
By David Rapp. August 25, 2011. LJ.
“Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive” offers television programming from that fateful day.

9/11 Ten Years On: 15 Titles
By Elizabeth R. Hayford. August 4, 2011. LJ.
This book list offers memoirs and other titles that look back on that fateful day and the years since.

For more, visit our September 11 resources page.

This year offered another impressive display of collaborative projects, demonstrated by the substantial increase in applications, as media specialists and educators looked for new ways to incorporate library resources into classroom learning and teach critical thinking skills,” says Marlene Woo-Lun, publisher of Library Media Connection. “We are excited to honor the efforts of all of the winners and participants this year.”

The TEAMS Award was created to recognize the critical collaboration between teachers and media specialists in promoting learning and increasing student achievement.

Nominations were evaluated based on:
• Demonstrated collaboration between media specialists and teachers during the school year
• Effective techniques that positively impact student learning and achievement
• Support received from school leadership
• Ability for others to replicate this best practice

“Twenty-first century skills such as information literacy and critical thinking are crucial to the success of today’s students both in the classroom and beyond,” says Nader Qaimari, senior vice president, sales and marketing for Gale. “The collaborative projects we’re honoring with this year’s TEAMS Award, clearly demonstrate and instill these important skills in students around North America.”

Each winning school receives $2,500 in cash, Gale products, a one-year subscription to Library Media Connection, and the Educator’s Professional Bookshelffrom Linworth Publishing/Libraries Unlimited. The winners will also be honored at a reception at the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) conference in Hartford, CT, in November.

The winning projects
At Draper Elementary School, media specialist Bronte Tatum teamed up with fourth-grade teacher Kirsten Reid to develop a research project on endangered animals that provided opportunities to collaborate with the art, physical education, and music departments. The students created a digital book, “We Are Endangered. Can You Help Us?”

At Constable Neil Bruce Middle School, teacher librarian Dayna Hart and seventh-grade social studies teacher Jenn Craig worked together on a project that asked students to create their own civilizations as they simultaneously learned about ancient civilizations in history.

At Branford High School, library media specialist Jessica Mularski and history teacher Jennifer Kordek collaborated on a project that asked students to create an interactive etextbook on the First World War. The textbook will be put on the iBooks market for other students and educators to enjoy.

Honorable mentions
In addition to the winners noted above, Gale and Library Media Connection also recognized several schools, awarding them Honorable Mentions, for their submissions:

• Sunnyland Elementary School in Bellingham, WA
• Myron J. Francis Elementary School in East Providence, RI
• Centennial Junior High School in Casper, WY
• Driscoll Middle School in San Antonio, TX
• Elkton High School in Elkton, MD
• Liverpool High School Annex in Liverpool, NY

Nearly 10,000 students at 20 local schools now have access to The Indianapolis Public Library’s collection of nearly two million items as part of the Library’s growing Shared System, an interlibrary collaboration that provides online circulation services and joint access to the catalogs and collections of member institutions.

[Clip]

Begun in 1995, the Shared System allows students to use their library cards to request materials from the Indy Library’s online catalog and from their own school library collections, and provides a delivery system that transports items between Indy Library branches and the schools. The Library also performs processing and cataloging services for the cooperative. It is the only such system in the United States that uses this cooperative model between schools and public libraries.

The Shared System includes a combination of private, public and charter schools along with a state school (Indiana School for the Deaf), and two local art museums (Eiteljorg Museum and the Indianapolis Museum of Art).

“This is a unique partnership that helps the Library support Marion County students by giving them more tools to access information and the resources they need,” said Sarah Batt, the Library’s Shared System Manager. “Schools can leverage their scarce resources by sharing the materials they purchase with each other.”

See Also: A History of the Shared System (via IPL)

See Also: Shared System Info Page (via IPL)

A selection of books challenged in Alabama public schools recently.

“The book is just completely objectionable, from language to the content,” Holtzclaw told Alabama Media Group’s AL.com news site on August 28. According to Holtzclaw, a constituent had queried him about the book’s inclusion on the Common Core reading list, and he has since brought the matter to the attention of State Superintendent Tommy Bice, AL.com reports.

Although Holtzclaw supports the implementation of Common Core in Alabama—surprisingly, against the wishes of the state’s Republican party, who recently introduced a bill calling for the standards’ complete repeal—Holtzclaw says he sees no value requiring students to read the novel, and that it should not be included on any required reading lists, AL.com reports.

School board member Betty Peters, who represents Alabama’s District 2, agrees. She calls the novel “pornographic” and “utterly inappropriate,” according to AL.com.

Support for Morrison
The Bluest Eye—which tells the story of 11-year-old Pecola Breedlove, who prays for her eyes to turn blue “so that she will be beautiful”—is listed by the American Library Association as the 15th most commonly banned or challenged book during the years 2000–2009 for its sexual content and, at times, graphic subject matter. However, the 43-year-old book has long been considered to be an important contribution to American fiction for its powerful themes and literary merit.

It was named an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000, and its author has been consistently praised for exploring similarly difficult themes in subsequent works. Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 for Beloved (Knopf, 1987)—itself the 26th most challenged book in recent years—and she is also the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1993, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2012.

As the situation continues to unfold against a backdrop of the start of a new school year and continued battles in the state over the Common Core, one local newspaper in Alabama, The Anniston Star, is taking a stand. Its editorial board has called out Holtzclaw for what it calls his misguided position, taking issue with both his admission that he had not read the book in its entirety (having only reviewed excerpts), and with what it sees as a mere attempt at political posturing.

“The fact that teachers are not required to adopt and teach The Bluest Eye seems to make little difference to the senator, any more than the fact that many of the ‘highly objectionable’ themes—racism, incest and child molestation—can be found in the Bible, the works of Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and Alabama’s most-loved novel, To Kill a Mockingbird,” the Star’s editorial reads.

“The education of our children is important…In a better world, parents would read the books their children are assigned and understand why those books are appropriate for what is being taught. The world would be even better if politicians would read the books instead of reviewing excerpts passed along to them for reasons that have little to do with education and a lot to do with politics.”

Challenges in Alabama
The Bluest Eye joins a motley crew of books challenged in recent years in Alabama’s schools and school libraries, according to a long-term study completed this summer by journalism students and reporters working at the Anniston Star. The list includes, but is not limited to Invisible by Pete Hautman (Simon & Schuster, 2005), White Oleander by Janet Fitch (Little, Brown, 1999), The Complete Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth by Sheila Kitzinger (Dorling Kindersley, 1980), Crazy Lady! by Jane Leslie Conly (HarperCollins, 1993), and The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks (Warner, 1996).

The statewide investigation was conceived of as an exercise in public document retrieval for newspaper interns pursuing masters’ degrees in community journalism at the University of Alabama, a Star news editor, Tim Lockette, tells School Library Journal.

At the Sanford Middle School in Lee County, Invisible, featuring a teen battling mental illness, was challenged in 2011 by a parent citing objectionable language.

Sanford school officials then asked two 12-year-old students to read Invisible and write down their thoughts, documents that were forwarded to the Star. “It was delightful to see kids getting involved,” says Lockette. Both students liked the book, he says, though “one of them said it wasn’t appropriate for his grade.” The school ultimately flagged Invisible for mature readers.

Parents objected to the presence of White Oleander, about a troubled girl shuttled through a series of foster homes, at Winterboro High School in Talladega, in 2006. At issue was the book’s sexual content and foul language. Students now need a parent’s permission to access the book.

The Complete Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth, in the library collection at the B. B. Comer Memorial High School in Talladega County, was reconsidered after a complaint over pornographic images and “explicit drawings of how to make love while pregnant,” records show.

Though one in eight children in Talladega County are born to teenage mothers, according to the Star’s own article about its challenged books study, the book was moved to a reference shelf in 2005. Students now need parental permission to check it out.

Challenged material also included two books in the “Chronicles of Vladimir Tod” series by Heather Brewer (Dutton), about an eighth grader whose father was a vampire, according to the Star.

The books were challenged by the caregiver of a student at the White Plains Middle School, located in Anniston, in 2010. While the objector stated concerns that the book could be harmful to students inclined toward violence, the titles remain on the shelves.

Other titles that parents found offensive include Hunted: A House of Night Novel by P. C. and Kristin Cast (St. Martins Griffin, 2009) in the Auburn City School system, and Dan Gutman’s Return of the Homework Machine (Simon & Schuster, 2009), at the Mountain Brook schools.

Though Auburn City did not initially disclose details on its challenge, officials later told the Star that a parent objected to Hunted’s profanity. After a review, it remains on the shelves. Gutman’s book, a story for 4th- to 6th-grade readers about a computer that completes homework, also was spared its challenge and remains on school shelves.

Though records of challenged books are technically public information, nearly one third of the schools contacted did not respond to reporters at all, according to Lockette. Other than the nine districts reporting challenges, 77 districts reported no challenges and 46 districts did not answer to repeated requests for records, he says. “I think people are scared of records requests, particularly the smaller districts,” says Lockette. “This is something they’ve never done before.”

The incompleteness of data is one possibly reason why student interns found no recent challenges to The Bluest Eye in their research, Lockette notes—not necessarily that is has not been challenged. It’s possible that the book, in previous years, was not on school library shelves, or it had been challenged only in one of the districts that didn’t respond to the Star’s request for records, he says.

“We see it all the time with public records,” he adds. “In states where there’s a strong public records law, there is an understanding that you have to comply with that law. Where people haven’t dealt with public records very much, there is bit of confusion or fear about releasing documents.”

Adds Leah Cayson, a student intern who worked on the project, “The law says that any citizen has the right” to see a public record. Thus, to withhold information was surprising.”

Involving the community
Fortunately, according to the Star’s research, “Most of these books didn’t get taken off the shelves,” Lockette says. “They remained in the libraries.”

“It’s not our idea to go in and judge the requests,” he adds. “It’s more to spark a conversation. These decisions are being made. The community is talking about books. It’s usually a good thing.”

As for The Bluest Eye, its fate remains to be seen. Will additional Alabama school board members call for its removal? Will Holtzclaw reconsider his position? Will the Alabama Department of Education come out explicitly in support of the Common Core and the novel’s inclusion in Alabama’s curriculum?

According to AL.com, the Alabama Department of Education was planning to respond to Holtzclaw’s request, although officials did not immediately reply to inquiries about the matter from School Library Journal. Also, SLJ’s requests for comment to the Senator’s office were not immediately returned.

However, Holtzclaw admitted to AL.com last week that his goal was not to ban books, but to ensure this particular novel would not be required reading of any student, noting, “There is a slippery slope, and there are folks that will find objectionable material in widely accepted classic American literature.”

Follett

“We implemented the process for removing the older Follett Digital Reader and TextFlow Reader apps and activating the new Follett Enlight app,” says Britten Follett, the company’s communications manager. “Currently the Follett Enlight app is appearing in GooglePlay, however we are waiting on the Apple Store to refresh in order for the Follett Enlight app to appear [there].”

Although some school librarians had expressed dismay this week—on Twitter and elsewhere on social media—after encountering problems accessing the new app, Follett confirms that the app is live on both online stores. Those having trouble locating it on iTunes, she notes, can use this direct link:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/follett-enlight-k-12-edition/id692783324?mt=8

Enlight is designed to provide schools with universal access to “quality K–12 econtent in a consistent virtual learning space that promotes critical thinking skills through reading, studying, and note taking,” the company says. Enlight also allows students to add notes and highlights to ebooks, and gives students access to chosen dictionaries based on reading levels.  Beyond Enlight, the new release of FollettShelf includes two new modules designed to connect econtent to all parts of a school district:  FollettShelf Classroom Connections, and FollettShelf District Manager.

“On the heels of new partnerships with Random House and Hachette Book Group, this latest release…gives schools access to thousands of popular ebook titles for K–12 students in a classroom-ready reading environment,” adds Tom Schenck, Follett School Solutions’ president, COO.

Back to reading

Bouncing Back to School: Great Books for Easing First Day Jitters
By Joy Fleishhacker
From what to wear to following rules to making friends, these engaging picture books address common beginning-of-the-year concerns with solid storytelling, genuine empathy, and upbeat resolutions. The list includes titles both new and tried-and-true that will reassure youngsters that their apprehensions are shared by others.

Books to Enhance Class Trips and Learning Adventures | Focus On

By Joy Fleishhacker

A mix of fact-filled offerings and fictional adventures, these titles give kids a break from the routine and encourage interactive learning experiences.

Joyce Valenza’s tech picks

Fall decorating: a round-up of smart (and free) posters

Meaningful, inspiring, attractive visuals to fill our display cases, grace our bulletin boards, and embed on our websites—and where to find them.

Your back-to-school letter

Valenza shares Doug Johnson’s suggestions for writing the back-to-school letter

Orientation inspiration

With help from the #tlchat community, Valenza crowd-sourced suggestions for making library orientations inventive, different, and fun.

For more, visit our Back-to-School resources page.

According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics released today, college enrollment in fall 2012 plunged by half a million (467,000) from one year earlier. This decline, which includes both graduate and undergraduate enrollment, follows a period of substantial growth ─ 3.2 million ─ between 2006 and 2011.

These statistics come from School Enrollment: 2012. As the nation’s students begin a new school year, the Census Bureau releases its annual set of tables on the characteristics of children and adults enrolled in school at all levels ─ from nursery to graduate school. Among the characteristics examined are age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, nativity and foreign-born parentage.

This decline in college enrollment was driven by older students ─ that is, those 25 and older. Their enrollment fell by 419,000, while the enrollment of younger students declined by 48,000.

Hispanics didn’t follow the trend, as the number enrolled in college grew by 447,000 from 2011 to 2012. Meanwhile, non-Hispanic white enrollment declined by 1.1 million and black enrollment by 108,000. From 2006 to 2012, the percentage of all college students who were Hispanic rose from 11 percent to 17 percent. The percentage who were black also rose (from 14 percent to 15 percent), but the percent of non-Hispanic white students declined from 67 percent to 58 percent.

“This increase in the number of Hispanics enrolled in college can be attributed to the combination of an increase in the adult Hispanic population and their climbing likelihood of being enrolled,” said Julie Siebens, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Education and Social Stratification Branch.

The tables released today cover specific topics such as enrollment by grade, the attendance status of nursery school students and characteristics of their mothers, the type of school college students attend (two-year, four-year, etc.) and whether they attend full or part time, students taking vocational courses and the enrollment status of recent high school graduates. The information was collected in the October 2012 Current Population Survey.

Also released today was School Enrollment in the United States: 2011, a report that examines the characteristics of people enrolled in school at all levels using statistics from the Current Population Survey, American Community Survey and federal sources outside the Census Bureau. It covers some topics not typically covered in Census Bureau reports, such as Head Start, charter schools, home schooling and receipt of financial aid.

Although most of the statistics are national-level, some state-level data from the American Community Survey are presented. Updated 2012 American Community Survey statistics on school enrollment covering states and all geographic areas with populations of 65,000 or more will be published in September.

Other national highlights from the 2012 Current Population Survey tables:

–In 2012, 78 million people, or 26.4 percent of the population 3 or older, were enrolled in school.

–In 2012, there were 19.9 million college students, including 5.8 million enrolled in two-year colleges, 10.3 million in four-year colleges and 3.8 million in graduate school.

–In 2012, there were 4.2 million students enrolled in private elementary and high schools (first through 12th grade), down from 4.8 million in 2005.

–Non-Hispanic white children in 2012 comprised 53 percent of elementary school students, down from 58 percent in 2005. Hispanic children made up 24 percent of elementary students in 2012, up from 20 percent in 2005. Black children comprised 15 percent of elementary students in 2012, down from 16 percent in 2005.

–Students who were born in another country or whose parents were foreign-born comprised 32 percent of all those enrolled in school at all levels in 2012.

–While most students are under 25, there were 804,000 students age 50 and older enrolled in schools at all levels in 2012.

Direct to Data Tables

School Enrollment in the United States: 2011

It’s called “school reform” with a focus on “student achievement,” but I shudder to think where we have come as a nation that many public schools don’t have a library, and won’t ever get one unless someone can beg a grant from a foundation or corporation.

I saw this firsthand at the middle school/high school where I taught English in New York’s South Bronx. Touting itself as a model of school reform, this self-proclaimed “institute” was presented as a showcase of high standards and a passion for learning. Though set in the congressional district with the lowest per-capita income in the nation, the school was—the administration incessantly assured parents—the fast track to success.

The problem was, for its 350 students this school had little more than classrooms on the third floor of a former elementary school set between a hospital and a jail.

Dressed in uniforms resembling the old Catholic school outfit, the students looked the part of “scholars,” as the administration referred to them. But from what I could see, the kids really were just bit players in a tragedy entitled, “They Stole the American Public School Experience from Us and Called It Reform.”

A public school is supposed to have a music program. We only had a boom box and a bunch of drums and African gourds. A public school is supposed to have art. We had none. A public school is supposed to have a library. We didn’t.

We did, however, have a librarian. Ms. Page had been “thrust” upon our school when, after decades as the librarian in a large public high school, she was pushed out as it closed to make way for several new, smaller, reform-oriented “academies,” “institutes,” and “centers.” As a librarian without a library, she prepared a library-oriented bulletin board and was used as an administration utility player.

Sports? They were limited to baseball in a nearby park and basketball in the gym we shared with another school in the building. That is, until a teacher got a grant for an archery program that enabled a dozen ninth graders to spread out in the cafeteria after school to shoot at targets.

The power of grants became especially clear when the principal of the other small school in our building secured funding for a library. A hard-charging young fellow who knew his way around charities and foundations, he generated $500,000 a year from outside sources. He outdid himself with his school’s library.

Set on the second floor behind glass windows, it was a brand-new, high-tech oasis. It was gorgeous. Stack after stack of books, a line of brand-new computers. Carpet. Tables. Comfortable chairs.

Not that our students were permitted to use it while I taught there. I nonetheless led my eighth graders through for a tour, and they were dumbstruck. Even the most outrageous of them walked gently and touched nothing, knowing that this was a very special place.

Indeed it was. A school without its own library is now all too common. A crowd-sourced Google map, “A Nation Without School Libraries,” is dense with pins noting hundreds of schools—and school districts—without libraries or librarians.

Today, so much of what Americans have long taken for granted as the typical public-school experience is being eliminated—especially in schools opened under the banner of “school reform” and “student achievement.” Each year, as budgets shrink and test scores guide decisions, more and more school districts nationwide trim the “fat,” programs that enrich students’ lives culturally and help them grow and develop as people, but aren’t specifically academic. As a result, basics—even a school library—have become “extras” that are not taxpayer supported.

Once, students held bake sales and car washes to fund some activities. Now, principals, teachers, and parents have been forced to assume that role on a grand scale to pay for books, athletic equipment, after-school activities. Instead of cupcakes and soapsuds, they use today’s equivalent of the hat in hand—the grant application—to beg foundations and corporations to underwrite what, until recently, most Americans would have considered the birthright of students in our public schools.

John Owens is a former teacher and author of Confessions of a Bad Teacher, published by Sourcebooks.

Capstone distribution center employee with book shipment

The tornadoes decimated the city’s schools and completely destroyed its libraries. When Sharon Hagge, Capstone’s Distribution Center Coordinator, learned of the destruction in Moore, she knew her department would want to pitch in to help. They have been busy organizing the shipment, but the schools were only recently prepared to receive the large donation. “We know there’s a lot more work to be done, but we hope that Moore’s first school year after the storms is a happy and safe one,” Hagge said.

Each year Capstone donates more than $1 million in books worldwide, and will continue to help rebuild Moore’s libraries in particular with its “Buy a Book, Give a Book” promotion through its trade publishing program, Capstone Young Readers. The publisher donates one book to the Moore schools for every book purchased through its website. Consumers can simply use the Promo Code “MooreRelief” when placing an order online.

As students around the country return to school, those in New York City are facing a future without certified school librarians, as the NYC Department of Education (DOE) has asked to be excused from a decades-old state mandate on minimum staffing requirements. The request for a “variance” from the law (Commissioner’s Regulation §91.2), filed August 9 with the New York State Education Department (see SLJ’s coverage, “Educators, Parents Fight NYC Bid to Bypass State Mandate for School Librarians,”), proclaims a sad lack of vision concerning the contribution librarians make to this great city. Mayor Bloomberg, surely this is not the kind of legacy you wish for? This is how we wisely invest in our future?

The Wall Street Journal reports that there are a meager 333 certified librarians serving the city’s 1,700 schools, after steady declines for years. We have reached a new, perhaps critical, low.

The timing couldn’t be worse for our schools. It’s been shown that kids in schools with librarians do better than those in schools without—a pretty simple and sufficient case. By whatever name (teacher librarian, media specialist, or librarian), these professionals deliver on basic literacy, digital literacy, research skills, college readiness, and much more. And, now, when all too many teachers lack training on the new Common Core standards, the city continues to defund this key human capital investment. This, just as the reaction to the first scores truly tests the implementation of the standards. We need the skills that media specialists bring to our schools.

The DOE should be positioning librarians to provide on-the-ground support for the implementation of the most significant educational initiative of our generation. School librarians are a natural source of professional development on materials—print or digital—and they can be a vital link to parents in explaining what to expect in the transition. Librarians, including those directly confronted by the NYC DOE’s move, are out front on the Common Core nationally. We’ve published several of them here.

The fact is there has been an ongoing disregard for the mandate itself. This law, in place for decades, articulates the will of the public for the public good. It is an expression of thoughtful process. Undermining it via a series of one-off executive decisions made by principals under immediate budgetary pressure is not how our social contract works best. Perhaps it is not such a bad thing that this penny-wise, pound-foolish cost-savings tactic has been brought out in the open—and back into the political process.

We don’t need what the DOE calls “equivalent service” in its August 9 letter. We don’t need vague assurances of “arrangements” and “steps” that will be taken to cope with this disinvestment. The NYC DOE’s request presents an opportunity for those of us who know what librarians do to challenge what’s been happening and to demand that the department take the lead in producing better educational results by supporting the deployment of the Common Core and those who are key to its success.

Will the DOE provide a vision of how to improve our children’s education? Or will it continue to cut costs in ways that at best seem small-minded?

Welcome back to school, people.

Rebecca T. Miller
Editor-in-Chief
rmiller@mediasourceinc.com

Chicago’s new Back of the Yards Library, a public/school library hybrid.

Staffed with Chicago’s first teen librarians (two part-time staffers share the position), the public library will also have a children’s librarian, plus a branch librarian who is also a K–12 media specialist, who will serve that role at the library for students who come to the branch during class hours. The library shares a wall with the school, but students have to exit their building to enter the branch. Heralded by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the hybrid archetype is reportedly one he hopes to replicate going forward.

“They have the same mission: to educate our children,” says Emanuel, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “It shouldn’t be in separate buildings. It should be in a single building.”

Ruth Lednicer, Chicago Public Library’s director of marketing and communications, confirms that the city will eye opportunities like Back of the Yard where public libraries also serve as school library spaces, although she insists school libraries will not disappear.” “I don’t think it’s safe to say schools won’t have libraries,” says Lednicer. “We will take what we learn from this and adapt where we go forward, just as we won’t close public libraries and move them into schools. This was a perfect storm.”

Like many municipalities, Chicago is well familiar with shrinking budget lines. The city cut more than 3,000 positions, including teachers, while closing 47 elementary schools for the 2013–2014 school year.

At the same time, however, CPS built new library spaces inside four elementary schools at a cost of more than $2 million. The spaces have opened for the current school term, according to Dave Miranda, deputy press secretary for Chicago Public Schools

Unfortunately, CPS’s Department of Libraries and Information Services now has fewer staff members to support its teacher librarians going forward, according to Marie Szyman, vice president of the Chicago Teacher-Librarians Association.

“They have an enormous task to keep us all organized and they do an amazing job,” she tells School Library Journal, although she notes that the department “has been reduced to just a few people left.”

The Back of the Yards Library, with separate entrance to  the high school at right (glass building).

Partnerships between public libraries and schools are certainly common. Many work in tandem to encourage students to get public library cards, attend events, and sign up for summer reading programs. Szyma, too, promotes her local branch as a teacher librarian at Nathanael Greene Elementary, where she makes sure her students get library cards.

But cities are beginning to blur the boundaries between schools and public libraries.

Miami-Dade, for example, recently announced it would open five of its school libraries located in educational technical centers to public patrons this fall, even as it looked to close at least some of its branch libraries to balance its 2014 budget.

The partnership between the Back of the Yards Library and Back of the Yards High School will be a unique one, however, as they were designed to be shared. The public library will be open six days a week, and is in an area that lost a branch. Lednicer sees the new space as helping the community and also its students—a mission she believes libraries are designed to address.

“They do serve the same purpose,” she says. “Libraries and schools are here to educate kids.”

But whether having a public library double as a school’s media center—even one that’s just steps away— will serve students as well as one located inside their own building is unclear. With school just starting, some are waiting to see how the new model works.

“Is it worth trying or better not to approach it that way?” asks Szyman. “It’s going to be interesting to see how this works.”

These changes come as the district faced a $304 million shortfall in its budget for the 2013–2014 school year. The city agreed to borrow $50 million just to get schools open as Superintendent William R. Hite had threatened to delay their opening without those funds.

In addition, the Philadelphia School Reform Commission (SRC) passed a measure [PDF] during a contentious meeting on August 16 allowing principals to hire back staff based on the needs of the school—and not based on seniority. Parents and educators both voiced opposition to the measure by the SRC, which replaced the school board in 2001 with appointees from the governor and the mayor.

“I am heartbroken that we are having a conversation today because our government has abandoned an investment in public education,” says Daren Spielman, president and CEO of the non-profit Philadelphia Education Fund, who gave his comments during the meeting.

How school librarians may fare in the coming days is unclear. At least one school librarian whose position was transferred from an elementary school to a high school was told librarians may be hired back should the $50 million came through. Still, this is in a district that saw assistant principals, secretaries, school nurses, and guidance counselors—among other staffers—laid off at the end of the 2012–2013 school year.

“Apparently, they pretty much let principals decide how funds will be allocated in each building,” says Deb Kachel, co-chairperson of the legislation committee for the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association (PSLA). “So it’s very uneven which schools will have librarians and which won’t.”

Pennsylvania saw a 6 percent decrease from the number of school librarians working in K–12 schools between the 2011–2012 and 2012–2013 school years, according to statistics from the PSLA. For example, Harrisburg, PA, which had eliminated its certified school librarians for the 2012–2013 school year, has now eliminated all library staff as well—and is hoping to use volunteers to run its school libraries for the new school year.

Each year, PSLA runs a staffing survey across its 500 school districts starting in the fall. Eileen Kern, PSLA president, says she does not have a feeling how the numbers will come out this year. But while she sees urban areas, including Philadelphia, losing school librarian positions, other areas are also suffering, with 62 percent of school librarians in the state serving more than one school.

“That’s pretty alarming to me,” says Kerns, who nonetheless sees the urban school districts being hit the hardest. “I know it’s a drastic situation in Philadelphia.”

Carol Heinsdorf agrees. As former president of the Association of Philadelphia School Librarians and a national board certified teacher, she is watching the situation unfold in her city wondering how these changes will, in the end, affect the 136,000 school children set to head to classes next month.

She adds, “The ability of school librarians in Philadelphia to work effectively to promote academic achievement is wiped out.”

The union—the United Federation of Teachers (UFT)—and the New York Library Association (NYLA) both say they strongly oppose the DOE’s  variance request, which, if the state approved it, would allow NYC schools “to provide equivalent library services to students at secondary schools in alternative ways,” according to a copy of the request obtained by School Library Journal.

“’Equivalent library services’ is really slippery. It’s the most dangerous action a district could take,” says librarian Sara Kelly Johns, NYLA’s president-elect. ”It is not equitable,” she tells SLJ. “We can’t set aside the requirements for school librarians. Not as policy.”

Tom Dunn, director of communications for NYSED, confirms that the state received the DOE’s request, but says the state would not comment until it had prepared its response to the city.

Rumors in recent weeks that the DOE’s request might be forthcoming have spurred NYC library advocates to rally around this issue, according to Alison Gendar, a media rep for UFT. Gendar shared with SLJ a weekly bulletin to city principals, dated mid-June, in which Richard Hasenyager, the city DOE’s director of library services, asked principals to provide information that would help the city department put together its waiver/variance request to the state.

The DOE’s request to NYSED. (Image links to PDF of full document.)

Hasenyager declined to speak to SLJ  for this article, but Gendar notes that the UFT, upon seeing the principals’ bulletin, was initially “surprised that the DOE would seek to institutionalize” its chronic librarian understaffing rather than attempt to strategize solutions to the situation.

The UFT has been waiting for months for a response from State Commissioner Dr. John King on the second of its petitions, which it filed late last year in hopes that the state would be able to enforce the city’s compliance with Commissioner’s Regulation 91.2. The rule stipulates that all NYC secondary schools must employ at least a part-time certified school library media specialist, and schools with more than 700 students must employ a full-time media specialist. According to the UFT, city officials admit that more than half of the city’s secondary schools are in violation of this mandate.

One of the biggest challenges in enforcing Regulation 91.2, Gendar says, is that the Commissioner typically issues his decision after the end of the school year, making it moot. This time around, however, “we are considering our legal options to make the Commissioner rule in time for it to be meaningful,” Gendar says. “We have to wait for the state to come back with some kind of decision and then…that will clear the roadway for going to the (state) Supreme Court with this.”

In the meantime, NYLA is joining forces with other advocacy groups—including Urban Librarians Unite (ULU), the Alliance for a Quality Education (AQE), and Make the Road New York—in endorsing a planned local rally for parents and community members tomorrow, August 21, at 10 a.m. The event, organized by New Yorkers for Great Public Schools, will be a parental “Read In” on the steps of NYC’s Department of Education headquarters. In addition, NYLA has prepared its own opposition statement [PDF] addressed directly to Commissioner King, while Christian Zabriskie, ULU founder—and 2012 Library Journal  Mover & Shaker—has created a MoveOn.org petition for the cause, also addressed to Dr. King. And AQE has created its own petition to drum up more opposition among local advocates.

On the national level, the American Association of School Librarians, the American Library Association’s school library division, is standing by to offer support, according to its president, Gail Dickinson. Dickinson adds that she wonders how NYC teachers will meet the new Common Core State Standards without librarians. “[It] will be extremely difficult,” she tells SLJ. “Because of technology, we can take students to higher levels of digitally literacy than we ever could before, and they can search out so much more information, but along with that, the need for them to be able to filter that information—make judgments about that information—to create new knowledge is astounding.”

She adds, “Without school librarians, I worry about the digital divide between those students who arrive at college having had a school librarian who [taught] them the skills that they need, and those college freshman who have not had access to those skills. I suspect we’ll see them floundering.”

NYLA’s Sara Kelly Johns agrees. In NYC, she notes, “there’s not equitable access to librarians who can provide high quality research working collaboratively with teachers to meet the resource and instructional needs of students. [There’s] not an equitable approach to developing college and career ready students in every school. Students know how to search but not to research. It’s just not fair. NYC students deserve and need a certified librarian in every school. NYC has work to do.”

The importance of advocacy is evident to us during a crisis. When our libraries are threatened or our staff faces cuts, then we leap into motion. But we should be mindful of advocacy every day. With social media tools, we can plan and effectively communicate our messages creatively and consistently throughout the year.

Before school begins this fall, take time to craft a strategy for how you will talk about your library projects through social media. Especially if you are a solo librarian, making a calendar can help keep you on track.

Getting started

In the past, I’ve tended to be rather organic in my approach to social media. This year, I will be more organized. I’m crafting my yearlong social media advocacy plan now by adding a set of dated activities for marketing and communicating what the library does for the school. I know I will get the message out to the administration, my community, and students if I have scheduled myself to do it.

First, find a calendar tool for your plan. Google Calendar is my choice, because you can set it up to send you a daily or weekly agenda as well as hourly calendar alerts. Events can be set daily, weekly, or monthly. Next, decide what social media tools to use and to whom your messages will be directed. Ask yourself: How do I want to impact students? Parents? Administrators? In what way can I best communicate with each group, and what do I want to say?

Students may prefer Twitter, while parents may connect with Facebook. Some principals prefer looking at data; others, like a former principal of mine, like video.

You also need to figure out quantity of outreach. What times of year, and how often, should you contact each group? Should you ping students weekly or daily? Do monthly messages work well for parents? For administrators, are quarterly communications best? Perhaps you are a frequent tweeter, and don’t need to schedule this. One librarian I know implements effective “Twitter Tuesdays.”

Target your social networking efforts to the time of year: . There are many opportunities both to plan activities inside the library and to talk about them outside the library. Sync your social media calendar to these events.

Assessing your efforts

At the end of each month, assess whether you have met your goals. If not, don’t criticize yourself. Evaluate whether your goals are too ambitious, or what you can do to better meet them. The idea is to be more purposeful in our advocacy and to use social media to help us get the word out. Sharing what we do and inviting the larger community into our work is always valuable, not only for advocacy, but also for fostering a sense of community.

Carolyn Foote is a “technolibrarian” at Westlake High School in Austin, TX. She blogs at Not So Distant Future.

From Follet:

Follett today announced a partnership with U.S. trade publisher Hachette Book Group (HBG) to provide preK-12 school libraries and students expanded access to popular children’s titles in an ebook lending format for the 2013-2014 school year.

Ebook offerings published under HBG’s Little, Brown Books for Young Readers imprint include noteworthy books such as the Ninth Ward (Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book Award) and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (National Book Award Winner).  “Our goal is to have authors’ work available to schools and students as technologies and reading habits evolve, and this partnership with Follett helps us in this effort,” said Evan Schnittman, HBG’s EVP, Chief Marketing and Sales Officer.

Read the Complete Announcement