The New York City board of education is in the process of executing Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s $31.5-million plan to create small 300-book libraries for each of the city’s 21,000 K–8 classrooms.
William P. Casey, the board of education’s chief executive for program development, told the May 30 New York Times that over 4 million books for the city’s kindergarten through third-grade classrooms were ordered in early May. “We started with the primary grades because it’s critical that kids have access to good reading as early as possible,” said Casey. The board and the city teachers’ union developed a list of books that were broken down into five 150-book core groups and eight specialized 50-book modules that each teacher would choose from.
The next step is making sure the books are delivered to classrooms by September, said Casey. After that comes the selection of books for grades 4–8, which Casey conceded presents greater challenges since the focus will be more on subject matter than basic literacy. Additionally, middle-school students typically have multiple classrooms, so it is unclear how the titles will be distributed. Casey hoped the books would be ordered by October and arrive in classrooms after Christmas.
Posted June 4, 2001.