Grants Help Illinois Students, Schools, Libraries

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By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 04/02/2010

In a world where school budget cuts are standard play, three school librarians are finding a way to help not just their students—but their community as well.

Anieta Trame, Jennifer Muzzy, and Peggy Burton, all school librarians in the Mattoon Community Unit School District #2 in Illinois have been intrepid in finding bits of funding to keep their school library programs and literacy projects alive.

Librarian Anieta Trame (right) and students speaking at the Philanthropic Educational Organization Meeting.

Take the nearly $2,400 Linking for Learning per capita grant the media specialists bagged this year. Trame, media coordinator for the Mattoon Middle School, says her portion of the total represents about 10 percent of her school’s book budget, which she can use. That said, she still feels blessed by the support from her school district and administration.

“Is there ever enough? No,” she says. “But we are extremely fortunate. We have a full-time paraprofessional, and without that position we could not offer all of our programs.”

One such program, the ‘Ready to Read….Across Mattoon” is an annual event in which Mattoon Middle School’s 760 students go out into their community to read a book along with residents and raise awareness about literacy.

Now in its eighth year, the program has students and Trame travel throughout the area, going to local businesses, along with service organizations, passing out 1,000 copies of the books to whoever would like to read along. They begin the process in the spring, and actually finish in the fall of the following school year.

The school library pays for every copy—the school itself does not provide the funds. And this year selection, Ann Martin’s A Dog’s Life (Scholastic, 2005) came in at a $6,000 price tag—not a small amount. But Trame’s good fortune has continued. The Rotary organization donated $300, the Kiwanis’s $1,000, another $2,500 came from a separate grant, and other checks find their way to the library as well.

“Sometimes a community member will send in a check for $10, $20 or even $100,” says Trame.

And while students don’t physically get together with residents for booktalks, they do pass out postcards, hopeful that readers in the area will mail back opinions, and share with students in that way.

“We provide the postcards so we can hear their comments,” says Trame. “And in this way the students get a feel about what they’re community thinks.”