Austin Readers (Fight--and Win!) for School Libraries
Mark Smith

When the Austin Independent School District budget was released this year, it contained an increase of one million dollars for school library materials, an unprecedented increase that more than doubled the amount available for school library materials. In the same budget, three new full-time school librarians were added in the three largest high school libraries. What was the secret to this success? If you ask AISD library coordinator Elizabeth Polk, she’ll tell you it is the efforts of a core group of committed parents who formed what may be the only district-level friends of school libraries group in the country.

Within a year, this group of parents formed itself, established a mission, recruited advocates and library volunteers, and won major gains for school libraries in Austin. The best part, according to Ms. Polk, is that you can do it too. "This is absolutely replicable anywhere. The most important part is to find your core group."

Finding the Core Group

The story of Austin Readers for School Libraries began in 1995 when a parent, Virginia Raymond, learned that the AISD school board planned to cut back from full- to part-time librarians in several elementary schools with fewer than 450 students, including the one attended by her son. There was talk of using volunteers to take up the slack. Ms. Raymond thought this sounded like a bad idea and told the school board so in an open budget hearing. "Once you start replacing the librarian with volunteers, you have a spiraling down effect," says Ms. Raymond. "When the library is open fewer hours, the librarian can do less and people come to expect less. The library begins to lose credibility and people question why they should continue to fund it."

Virginia Raymond spoke at the March 1995 meeting of the school board. She distributed a four-page letter written to board President Kathy Rider that stated, "If small schools have to share librarians, in effect, you will be closing the libraries at those schools for half the time or more. This is a very short sighted move with tragic consequences for the education of students in those schools."

Virginia Raymond’s efforts had two effects, one intended and one not. The board restored the positions (one of very few changes made to the budget that year), and her actions caught the attention of school board member Ted Whatley. He told Elizabeth Polk that he had found a zealous advocate for school libraries. "Virginia Raymond made one of the most intelligent presentations I have ever heard," remembers Mr. Whatley. "I am dumbfounded by the willingness of the administration of the AISD to cut back on libraries." Over coffee one morning, Ms. Polk met with Mr. Whatley and Ms. Raymond to sketch out a plan for forming a group that could activate parents across the city to become interested in and advocate for their libraries.

Ms. Raymond recruited several other parents: Larry Elsner, Max Woodfin, Chip Harris, Ann Wheeler, and Janis Monger became the organizing nucleus of the group. In March 1996, the parents, joined by Barbara Thomas, the owner of Toad Hall, a children’s book store, met together to establish a mission for the group and plan their next step. The mission establishes a number of goals for the group including soliciting new funds, advocating for school libraries, and training librarians. The mission statement itself reads as follows:

Our mission is to encourage and facilitate children’s reading, to instill a passion for books, and to promote libraries as strong, vital institutions that are central to the well-being of our schools and community.

A central belief of the group is the importance of not becoming a burden to school librarians. The group is adamant about being a help and not a hindrance.

Next, the group invited every school librarian in the district—including recently retired librarians—to a meeting to discuss the interests of the group. At the meeting, held April 13, the group asked the librarians to identify their most crucial needs. They asked that each of the librarians present identify one person in each school that could be cultivated as an activist for the school library. Librarians who could not attend the meeting were urged to call or write with their ideas.

Recruiting Volunteers

The next step was to recruit volunteers. The organizers reasoned that a great place to find reading advocates might be the first annual Texas Book Festival held in Austin in November 1996. The Austin Readers for School Libraries, as the group was now known, purchased a booth at the festival and hung out a banner that asked "ARE YOU INTERESTED IN SCHOOL LIBRARIES?" Ms. Raymond and the others also worked the crowd, proactively approaching festival goers to ask if they would be interested in working with the group. The group was pleased to find that many people attending the festival were indeed interested in school libraries. Contacts at the festival yielded a number of prospective volunteers.

These people were invited to a training session held in January 1997. At this session, the organizers described the types of jobs for which volunteers were needed and attendees were asked to consider jobs that most interested them. One parent who was fluent in French and Spanish volunteered to help select books in these languages while another volunteered to write grant proposals.

The interests of the volunteers were matched with the needs previously identified by the school librarians (at their April 13 meeting and via a survey conducted in fall 1996) and volunteers were dispatched to the appropriate libraries. School board member Mr. Whatley put in his time too, continuing his ongoing practice of volunteering at Zavala Elementary in economically disadvantaged East Austin. Throughout the process, however, the group stressed the need to not get in the librarians’ way, but to remain helpful where they were needed.

Advocating for Libraries

While the group was organizing volunteers, it also continued its efforts to convince the AISD Board to allocate more money for school libraries. The core group of organizers—Virginia, Larry, and Max—attended several school board meetings, especially those at which the budget was discussed. They took advantage of the comment period to say a word for libraries, to outline the needs of the libraries, and stress the importance of the library in learning.

The group found an editorial by June Kahler Berry in the Austin American-Statesman that outlined the results of landmark studies by researchers Keith Lance and Stephen Krashen showing that a strong school library leads to higher test scores and better academic performance.

Elizabeth Polk commented on the approach of the group during the budget hearings. "We never whined, we stayed focused on the positive. We told them what the school library could do if it had the proper resources. We’d take a box of books and say ‘thank you for your support. Here’s what you gave us’—and it’d be a teeny box of books!"

"All those parents got up there," Polk remembers. "From all over town. They’d stand up in the audience and say. ‘I’m from Casis,’ or ‘I’m from Travis Heights’ or wherever and they would all be saying the same thing—that they needed better support for the school library. That is so powerful."

The group stressed the need to bring the school libraries up to state and national standards. They informed the school board of the standards and stressed the importance of having at least the average cost of a book per pupil.

Even though she had asked for $1.5 million in new money for books, Ms. Polk was ecstatic when the board actually appropriated $1 million. The amount was distributed on a per pupil basis across the city, averaging over $10 per child for library materials. The board also provided one additional full-time librarian for each of the three largest high schools in the city for a total of two librarians each in Austin, Bowie, and Travis High Schools. "It’s still not enough," Ms. Raymond comments.

In addition to the new funding for libraries, the group also made great strides in achieving official recognition of the needs of libraries in the AISD’s long-range plan. Initially, the plan had contained no mention of school libraries except in reference to joint public/school use, but after the group’s assertive presence at several public hearings, strong recommendations for school libraries were incorporated.

What about the group’s priorities? "Our emphasis is on books," Virginia Raymond explains. "Partly because we are book lovers, and partly because we are not particularly wowed by the bells and whistles of computers. Everyone can come into the library and take a book out. They can take them home, they can take them to the park or to the beach. Books are not dependent on special technology or other requirements—they are available to everyone." Or, as stated in the group’s position statement: "Books require no special technology and can be taken anywhere a person goes. They are the most accessible, and thus the most democratic, tools we have to share ideas and information."

"They have always stressed books," Ms. Polk explained. "All members of the group are computer users and computer literate, but they believe that you have to be able to read to be able to use a computer." Larry Elsner comments that Austin Readers has "tried not to come off as anti-computer, but rather pro-book and pro-learning."

Cause to Celebrate

With an impressive set of accomplishments and victories under their belt, the group chose to celebrate by recognizing the volunteers who had put in many hours in school libraries during the year. However, true to their pledge of not being a burden to the librarians, they took on all the work of organizing the May 1997 party, including providing the refreshments (home made brownies) and producing certificates to present to the volunteers.

What’s next for the Austin Readers for School Libraries? Priorities for the 1997–98 school year are, first, to increase support for school libraries by enhancing the awareness of what libraries do—"that they are not just warehouses for books," Ms. Raymond explains. "We want there to be a recognition of the role of the library and the librarian in the school and why they are important." Second, they want to place more volunteers in the libraries, and third, they want to place more books in the libraries.

"We want to have more book drives," commented Mr. Elsner. "And we want to start actively soliciting funds and/or new books from book stores. We envision having a wish list on file for each school at book stores—like a bridal registry—and then ask for donations."

Mr. Whatley stands ready to advocate for libraries from his position on the AISD board. "The next major issue will come when they run out of money for technology, they will start to try to take it out of the library budget. They will also try to change the role of the librarian to be machine dispenser. We have a lot of great librarians that are comfortable with the new technology, but we have others who are wonderful librarians, but they don’t yet have those skills. I hate to see anyone discriminated against because their talents and expertise lie in other areas. It comes down to eternal vigilance for quality."

Ms. Polk and Mr. Elsner both expressed their conviction that this project is readily replicable in any district. Mr. Elsner suggests that the first step is to meet with school librarians to make sure that the group is truly a support and not making more work. Next, get in touch with Friends of the Libraries U.S.A (FOLUSA) to research such standard legal issues such as incorporation. Finally, both these organizers stress the need to identify a core group of passionate readers and begin to define the most important issues.

"There is no possible way to say how very important this is," says Ted Whatley. "We have found out how hard it is to stir things up. It has been very hard. Libraries tend to get beat up. There is no one out there fighting for the library—especially the school library. The school board now has a commitment to libraries. It takes a lot of work, but it is worth it—libraries are so important."