It was like reading the names of the dead, who shouldn’t be forgotten, at a memorial service. One speaker after another at Houston ISD’s board meeting Thursday came to the front of the room pronouncing name after name. Only in this case, each name came with a price tag.
“Almeda Elementary school. We purchased $23,816 worth of books. Next year our students will no longer have a library program. Alcott Elementary School purchased $6,570 worth of books. Anderson Elementary $96,962 …
“Crockett Elementary…next year children won’t have access to $62, 736 worth of books unless they keep their library. Crockett Elementary won library program of the year this year. Forester Elementary $167, 000 …
“Henderson Elementary $75,743 … Hobby Elementary $80,528 …”
Elementary schools were followed by middle schools. And then the high schools. It took a while even with speakers rushing through the one minute allotted for each address.
By the time they were done, any hopes that Superintendent Mike Miles and his appointed Board of Managers might have had that furor over the disappearing libraries across the district had subsided, was shot down Thursday night.
In an effort remarkable for its comprehensiveness, library advocates including Students Need Libraries in HISD and Friends of HISD Libraries through public records requests coordinated a list of all the schools who thanks to federal ESSER funds bolstered their libraries in 2020.
Only to be told last year and this that they really don’t fit into the New Education System model Miles has installed in many of the schools.
So what’s going to happen to those thousands of books and the thousands of dollars of taxpayer money attached to them, especially in buildings where Team Centers have replaced the libraries? We already know that librarians are going if not already gone.
Jan Kramer an HISD parent charged: “Next year more than 70,000 students will not have access to library books. Three years ago HISD decided that every student deserves a library that meets Texas library standards and spent more than $15 million in federal ESSER funding on books and other resources. “7.5 million was spent on schools mostly classified as NES last year. Books at NES schools are being covered up, put in storage or given away.”
Or as Anne Furse, co-founder and board chair of Friends of HISD Libraries explained further later, “Various things happened to the books. [It’s] nearly impossible to find out. Some in storage. Some given away. Some on shelves but not visible/accessible. Some visible/accessible but no staff to encourage kids to use them and no formals borrowing/tracking system. We consider these wasted dollars as the books and other resources are benefiting very few, if any, students.”
Sitting there listening to the list of the endangered if not about to be extinct, it reminded me of a program HISD initiated a few years ago as an adjunct to what teachers were doing to try to overcome the hurdles that keep many children from reading on grade level by third grade.
It wouldn’t be a continuation of the lesson classroom teacher had just given the 1st and 2nd graders. The operating premise was that if you could sit a child down in front of a book for even just a half hour a week in a non-judgmental atmosphere, with a volunteer by their side who was reading to them, that kid might well learn to love books.
I was one of the volunteers intrigued by the idea. Once a week I’d drive to a school in the Sunnyside area, one year to one school, the four following years to another. Neither school was winning any awards for academic achievement.
Each year, I’d be matched with two children and meet with them, one after another, 30 minutes each. After collecting them from class (they’d bring along a classroom book) we’d go to a special brightly covered library kiosk where they’d pick up the book they wanted to hear that week along with the craft project that went with it. Then we’d go to a table or pair of student desks and begin.
For the rest of the half hour we’d explore the book together. I’d read the book of the week, they’d read their classroom book to me. Once in a while we’d do flash cards. More often we’d do the craft or the game that came with the book. Usually there was time to read another book at their request.
There were no tests. There was no grading the work. There was just an oasis in the day when these kids could relax and feel they were special. And associate reading books with something both comfortable and entertaining.
Librarians are another kind of oasis when it comes to books. They aren’t there to test kids on what they’ve learned. They don’t require follow-up book reports. They are there not just to check out books but to help kids find books that will might make them happy, possibly keep them entertained, and perhaps lead them to read further.
The public’s continued criticism of jettisoning librarians and books has been so great that Superintendent Mike Miles who previously famously said that kids could read books on their own time before and after school — amended his stance in head-spinning fashion recently when he was justifying the need for massive personnel cuts to say he’d like to have libraries in schools if he had the money.
These books were bought for campuses in 2020 using federal ESSER funds. Exacerbated by the learning loss thanks to COVID-19, many of these school libraries were seriously deficient to start with. And had been for decades. Then-Superintendent Millard House II sat down with interested parties and parceled out these funds to start to close some long overdue and shameful gaps in equity.
As Furse explains: “Many HISD libraries in underserved neighborhoods were stocked with unappealing, outdated, worn books. Library staff and students really enjoyed these new books. Some furnishings were also included – like shelving and comfortable seating, she said..
“Then many of these libraries were closed in 2023.”
Here’s the thing that teachers and librarians know and well-intentioned reading volunteers come to find out. In too many – but not all— lower income households in HISD there are no books at home.
The idea that many of these families would be making regular trips to their neighborhood public library was discounted as not realistic by at least one speaker at Thursday night’s meeting. To say that’s what’s happening is wishful thinking at best, and a disingenuous way to set aside an issue at worst.
Getting back to Read Houston Read, after five years, there was a change in program leadership at the HISD school where I’d volunteered and the new person didn’t quite get things together till later in the year.. I volunteered again but never heard back. Then COVID-19 interrupted and going into the schools wasn’t a possibility. You can still look up Read Houston Read on the HISD website but when you “click here” you arrive on a page saying: “This page is currently unavailable.” It’s a ghost roaming the HISD website, never cleaned up.
I don’t know if there would be time or inclination in so many of the New Education System schools to interrupt the schedule and pull a kid out of class to be read to. This method generated no data. Its results were anecdotal at best.
And perhaps that’s a key problem for librarians. Some speakers Thursday referred to scholarly studies showing kids with libraries did better in school, but without a precise way to quantify how a trip to the library affects STAAR scores, librarians are at a disadvantage to prove their worth.
Asked how her group works if the HISD libraries are disappearing, Furse says: “We started by promoting the importance of school libraries and buying resources for underserved HISD libraries. Then Miles came and the libraries started disappearing. Now we are no longer buying books, rugs, carts and other supplies.”
So what does an organization devoted to bringing more books into school libraries do when those very books aren’t wanted?
“We are currently focused on advocating for libraries/protesting the continued removal of staff and resources,” Furse said. Ironically enough on May 21, they are hosting an end-of-the year celebration of 75 years of HISD libraries and honoring the HISD library program of the year. Somehow it’s hard to see Miles attending.
“Part of our mission is library staff support and professional development,” Furse said. “That’s all we can do right now. “
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
