Editorial-Turning a New Paige

The Honorable Roderick R. Paige
Secretary of Education
Department of Education
Room 7W301
400 Maryland Ave. SW
Washington, DC 20202

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I offer my congratulations on your appointment as the Secretary of Education in what are challenging and opportune times. Spring is a time of renewal and rejuvenation, especially in schools, as they wind down and gear up for summer break. It is an appropriate time for proposals for school reclamation to take root to bud into reality.

The innovative recommendations from the recent National Commission on the High School Senior Year, of which you were a member, are an indication of your strong education values and receptiveness to school reform. You are serving a new president who has placed education as his first priority. Mr. Bush has pledged to spend $5 billion over the next five years to promote reading for grade school pupils. There is one key ingredient that is crucial to the emergence of children who can read and who want to read: school libraries. I urge you to stress the importance of both school and public libraries as the core and heart of any educational process. The germination of lifelong readers and learners very often begins with a children's librarian.

You have been quoted as saying school libraries are important, something you no doubt learned at home, as your mother was a librarian. In your previous job as Houston's superintendent of schools, you backed up your commitment by providing money to improve the city's outdated school libraries. I will be sending you a complimentary subscription to our magazine to keep you and your aides abreast of issues facing libraries for young people. These libraries are the taproot of reading and learning. Please empower them to help grow the readers who will be our next generation.

Sincerely yours,

Julie Cummins

Editor-in-Chief

School Library Journal