DC School Libraries Get Extreme Makeover
A three-year project is underway to revamp K–12 media centers in the nation’s capital
By Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 1/1/2007
Students at Stuart-Hobson Middle School in Washington, DC, now enjoy a state-of-the-art facility, with wavy bookcases designed to resemble rock formations and “pods” that separate books from the circulation desk. Words like “read” and “dream” appear on cloud-like structures dangling from the ceiling.
Forty-eight K–12 school libraries in the nation’s capital have undergone dramatic renovations this year. Another 37 school libraries are on tap for renovations in 2007, with 23 or so secondary schools expected to follow in 2008.
The total cost of renovating DC’s school libraries will top $7 million, with money coming from the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) and the federal government.
DC has long been known for its decrepit school and public libraries, but it took DCPS Superintendent Clifford Janey’s 2003 master education plan to get things rolling. It calls for a fully modern library in each of the district’s 147 K–12 schools, and has prompted complete makeovers for facilities in poorer neighborhoods, with minor improvements in more affluent areas.
The plan also requires at least one part-time media specialist in each library. To meet that goal, the district recently hired 70 certified media specialists, literacy specialists, and teachers, with the expectation that the latter two will obtain MLS degrees.
The result is what Philecia Harris, DCPS’s new director of library services, says is a change in attitude about the role of libraries in education. “Principals are actually choosing [to budget] for librarians across the board, as opposed to librarians being on the chopping block.”
Meanwhile, Stuart-Hobson, along with seven elementary schools on Capitol Hill, have another source of funding. A volunteer group called the School Libraries Project and its parent foundation are lobbying DCPS for $700,000.
Cochair Suzanne Wells says she and other parents, teachers, and principals made libraries a priority in 2005. “Some of the schools didn’t have librarians, so the libraries were closed,” she adds. Those that were open were “drab spaces” with many collections that were 20 years old.
Wells’s project, which operates in conjunction with DCPS’s renovations, convinced eight architectural firms to redesign, gratis, the Capitol Hill schools. One of the designs will include a juice bar in the Stuart-Hobson library, a room where kids now love to hang out and read. “It’s a really cool, hip place to be in school,” says Wells, whose son, Joshua, attends Stuart-Hobson.
Another kid, a sixth-grader named Theresa, wrote a prize-winning essay for a competition last year on the topic “What I’d change at my school library.” In her essay, Wells says, Theresa wrote that, “The library should be an amazing place to be.”
Members of the School Libraries Project were so moved that they enshrined Theresa’s statement on their print materials.
