School Library Funding Press Kit

School Library Funding

Good school libraries are essential to a good education!

School libraries are considered a valued resource in many communities; however, funding cuts have resulted in the loss of school librarians, materials and technology training.

According to the American Library Association's State of America’s Libraries Report, in terms of funding, school libraries had mixed success in dodging the economic bullets of 2010. School libraries in high-poverty areas experienced big drops in spending on information resources and in collection size. Overall, school expenditures on information resources were down more than 9 percent from the previous year.

Total school-library staff hours declined, with an average of 2.4 fewer hours per week reported in 2010 than in 2009, according to the annual School Libraries Count! survey (PDF) conducted by the American Association of School Librarians, a division of the ALA. The largest decreases were in the Northeast and the Midwest.

The average number of hours school library staff spent each week delivering instruction continued to increase in the past year, even though school libraries reported being open fewer hours than in 2009. School library collection sizes remained level, despite a 2.6 percent decline in the number of books.

Recent statistics from the Colorado State Librarys (PDF) shows that elementary schools with at least one full-time endorsed librarian averaged better Colorado student assessment testing than those with less than one full-time endorsed librarian. More students earned proficient or advanced reading scores and fewer students earned unsatisfactory scores where there was a full-time endorsed librarian. This is one of numerous school library impact studies that show the positive influence school librarians have on student achievement.

Map of the elimination of school library positions

View A Nation Without School Librarians in a larger map

This map marks the cities, towns, communities, and states that have made the decision to either eliminate school library positions (indicated in blue) or require one school librarian to work with two (2) or more school library programs throughout the week (indicated in red).

Recommendations:

If children are to be prepared for their future, they must have access to information and learn to use it in meaningful and productive ways. Recommendations of the American Library Association include:

All school library media programs should be adequately funded to ensure that they include up-to-date collections in both print and electronic formats.
All students should have the benefit of trained school librarian, who can guide them in learning to use and understand a wide variety of information sources.
The school library program should be integrated with classroom curriculum so that students learn to make connections between subject areas, retrieve information and think independently.