Rant: My school library

Man, am I ever glad that I haven't identified which school I work at. 'Cause now I get to use the big anonymous format of the web to get real cranky about it.

So, we've got this money from an award, and we're decided how to spend it. In my small learning community, we suggested library books. I brought this idea to the table in a meeting with the principal, and his response was "More books. Do you mean, like in a particular subject?" No, I answered, just more books in general. I said that we have fewer books per student than most other schools in the district. He turns to his assistant and she agrees that we have approximately 4 books per student, whereas the average is 6 or 7. Well, if you believe this:

"The latest figure for the average number of school library books per K-12 student in California is 13.8. In 1986 the number reported per student was 10. Nationally, school libraries average 22 books per student."

then the situation at our campus is worse than we thought. Picture a school library as you remember them. Now take away all the bookshelves you have probably mentally placed in the middle of the room, and leave only one complete wall with books, and two partial walls with bookshelves. Now you've got our school library. And we say we want our students to read?

The last librarian we had was fantastic -- she started reading groups, campaigned for an outside reading area with tables, created a library committee, and (best of all, I think) threw out all the books that indicated we hadn't yet landed on the moon, or that listed MLK as (1/15/1929 to --). Which actually helped to decimate our collection, but with good reason. Some of the books were quite offensive, actually. I held on to one for a while that was called something like "Negro Stories." Anyway, she also did her best to replace them, which is not as easy as you might think. There's all kinds of red tape involved, so you can't just have people donate books or something. Anyway, having someone so dynamic for two years kind of spoiled me, and I have to admit that our new librarian would have big shoes to fill. But she also happens to have REALLY EXCEPTIONALLY TINY FEET. She just doesn't seem to like the kids much, for one. But what this is all leading up to, the big punchline here, was what she told me yesterday about my 2nd period class. See, they're not getting a lot done, and one of the reasons it that their behavior is pretty bad. I'll give you that. But the librarian's helpful suggestion yesterday was that I have "too many black kids" in the class. Wow. Well, I haven't thought of it that way before. And I hope I never do.