School librarians have regained a bit of ground at the federal level as the push continues to get school libraries restored to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is due for reauthorization. The foothold comes in the congressional appropriation of $28.6 million for literacy programs in the $916-billion budget for FY2012, and, reading between the lines of District Dispatch, might be attributed to guilt: Lawmakers apparently realized that they had inadvertently zeroed out the primary source of federal support for school libraries in FY2011 by defunding the Improving Literacy through School Libraries program.
Hey, whatever works.
Needless to say, school library advocates will continue to live in interesting times next year, when the national campaign to win passage of the SKILLs Act moves from Senate subcommittee to the floor. Stay tuned for ways you can help educate your representatives about the critical importance of credentialed school librarians to the optimum education of America’s children.
Office for Library Advocacy Director Marci Merola said that the appropriation “is certainly a step in the right direction, but we need to keep our eyes on the prize: an amendment for school libraries in the reauthorized ESEA.” Toward that end, ALA’s Special Presidential Task Force on School Libraries is working to create state-level delegations to visit their senators to make the case over the holiday break.
