At its September 23 meeting, the Chicago school board agreed to commit $500,000 to buy new books for public school library shelves. The announcement followed the September 8 kickoff of a $20-million fundraising goal set by the Chicago Public Schools Department of Libraries and Information Services.
Although the commitment is welcome, librarians maintain it falls considerably short of the $35,000 needed per school. Ann Carlson Weeks, director of the CPS library department, estimates that 75% of the library books in Chicago schools are out of date and says 100 schools do not have a certified librarian. At the board meeting, officials acknowledged that many libraries have not been updated since 1975, when federal funding for new book purchases ended, according to a report in the September 24 Chicago Tribune.
Posted September 28, 1998.