Columbus Gets $4.6 Million for Books

'It's a windfall for us, explains Brenda Gonzalez, head of instructional information services for Columbus, Ohio's 144 public schools. Gonzalez, a 21-year veteran of the city's schools, has reason to be exuberant. In February, the district announced that it would spend $4.6 million to bulk up the city's anemic school libraries. That translates into roughly 250,000 books. Most of those titles will be nonfiction books that are tied closely to the curriculum, says Gonzalez.

On February 20, Rosa Smith, Columbus's superintendent of schools, announced a plan to provide all of the district's libraries with at least 10 books for every student. Some of the district's 95 elementary schools had as few as five or six library books per pupil, while others offered as many as 30 books per student. Further exacerbating the problem was that the under-stocked libraries had collections that were fossilizing-at least 70 percent of their books were 20 years old.

Columbus's plan to shore up its libraries came in response to a 1999 curriculum-management audit that pointed out gross inequities in resources between schools in affluent areas and those in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Originally, the district had planned to automate its libraries. But after weeding its collections last summer-and removing 225,000 books-the district realized that its 'libraries were in worse condition than we had anticipated,' says Deputy Superintendent Gene Harris. As a result, the automation project was scrapped and new books became a top priority. The district will kick in $3.4 million to back the plan. Some of that funding, explains Harris, comes from money that was earmarked for automation; the rest comes from state funding. An additional $1.2 million will come from federal Title I money.

State standardized testing recently showed that only 37 percent of Columbus's fourth graders are reading at grade level. Gonzalez hopes the new library books will improve those numbers. According to 'the Colorado study, the Alaska study, the Pennsylvania study, the more materials you have in the library, the better the students will achieve,' says Gonzalez, citing the findings of Keith Lance's landmark study of school libraries and student achievement (April 2000, 'Dick and Jane Go to the Head of the Class ,' pp. 44-47).

At the moment, Gonzalez and her staff are in an enviable quandary. Columbus's 24 media specialists were expected to have ordered and received most of their books by the end of March-less than two months after receiving notification. Last October, Gonzalez tried to give her staff a heads-up, advising them to begin putting together book orders because a substantial wad of money was coming their way. The problem was, not everybody took her seriously. Shrugs Gonzalez: 'They had been cut back so and lost out so many times that they didn't believe me.'