GLENDALE : Students Raise $5,000 for Library Security

Students have chipped in more than $5,000 in money they raised to help buy a nearly $9,000 security system for their school library.

The system will be installed next month at Glendale’s Wilson Middle School, officials said.

The gift, totaling $5,133.15, was formally accepted during a Glendale Unified School District board meeting Tuesday night.

School officials said they will use the students’ contribution toward purchasing a security system for the 1,700-student campus--the first of the district’s four middle schools to have such a theft-protection device hooked up in a library.

Glendale and Hoover high schools are the only campuses that currently have library security systems, said Jim Gibson, district administrator for secondary education.

Wilson Principal Neal Siegel said he had asked student leaders in October if they were willing to donate their fund-raising money for the system. Siegel also told them that the school library has been plagued with book thefts or losses in the past.

“It amounted to several thousand dollars in potential losses per year,” Siegel said before Tuesday’s board meeting. “Over time, some kids don’t bother checking them out.”

The principal could not provide exact numbers because the school has no full-time librarian and no computerized system to keep inventory of books. To check books out, students sign a card in the book and give it to a school clerk in the library.

Student Council President Susan Lousararian said using student funds to help pay for the security device will make her peers more responsible.

“I think we need to put something into it also, because we’re the ones using the books,” the 13-year-old eighth-grader said. “It’s needed very much.”

Siegel expects the system to be installed by the time students return from winter vacation Jan. 3. Books in the library will be taped with special computerized codes that could signal an alarm if they are not properly checked out.

“We’re excited about it because we feel it will save us money, obviously in the long run” from book losses, he said. “Kids won’t be able to hide books in their book bags.”