President Obama Freezes School Library Funding in 2010
RSSBy Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 05/12/2009
President Obama may talk about the importance of libraries, but now that his budget is out, librarians are wondering, where’s the love?
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President Obama released the 2010 budget on May 7, 2009. |
“We’re disappointed by the budget because it lacks the adequate resources that libraries require to meet the needs of the American people,” says Melanie Anderson, the American Library Association’s (ALA) associate director of the Office of Government Relations. “We’ve more than demonstrated that libraries provide important resources for their communities during this recession.”
ALA had high hopes that Obama would be more generous to libraries next year, considering the president’s comment in February that his administration had begun to go “line by line through the federal budget” to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs and reward those that succeed.
That same month, the Department of Education(DOE) released a report saying that schools participating in the Improving Literacy Through School Libraries program perform higher on state reading tests.
Obama’s budget outline in March was also encouraging. “To give our children a fair shot to thrive in a global, information-age economy, we will equip thousands of schools, community colleges, and universities with 21st Century classrooms, labs, and libraries,” the president said.
Still, the president is only proposing a 0.5 percent increase to LSTA in 2010, bringing it to $213,240,000 for the nation’s 123,000 libraries.
Although the Improving Literacy Through Libraries program was authorized at $250 million in 2001, funding has never been appropriated at that level. Sponsored by the DOE, the federal program provides money to public school libraries to update collections, expand Internet connections, buy new technology, extend library hours, and provide professional development to media specialists. It was funded at $19.5 in FY 2006 and 2007, slightly more than its current level.
That’s why National Library Legislative Day—a two-day event that started yesterday—is so crucial this year, says Anderson. And librarians and their supporters need to tell lawmakers to increase public and school library funding.
Obama’s budget proposal now heads to Congress, which will decide the final funding numbers and pass a budget hopefully by its August recess.
“We’re looking forward to working with the President and with Congress to make them understand all the things that libraries do now to help their communities through this economic crisis,” Anderson says.
Also included, is $24.6 million for the Recruitment of Librarians for the 21st Century, a slight increase from $24.5 million in 2009.
