School Libraries Shelved Amid Neglect

The familiar oak card catalog in the Heninger School library gleams from countless polishings. Brightly colored posters extol reading’s joys. An American flag hangs in a corner. Tot-size chairs are arrayed in a cozy reading circle.

But the Heninger library, like many across California, is more of a museum than a valuable instructional resource.

The books were salvaged from a demolished school and include 40-year-old volumes preserving the hope that people might one day tread on the moon. The facts in the “Book of Amazing Facts,” copyright 1950, are not so amazing to children born four decades later. Thinking they’d be valuable if sold as antiques, an enterprising clerk tagged the oldest books, but they are still there to keep the shelves looking full. Even worse, fewer than one in 10 of the library’s books is in Spanish, a language spoken by 98% of Heninger’s students at home.

California’s dubious distinction of having reading test scores that are among the very worst in the nation has been widely publicized. Less well known is a fact that many believe is related: The state’s school libraries are among the most-neglected in the United States, according to the American Library Assn., and have failed to keep up with fast-moving demographic and instructional changes.

Santa Ana district librarian Doris Weakly, who oversees library services for 35,000 students, said the district has not budgeted money for libraries for the past four years. Even though the library remains open at Heninger, teachers don’t use it much.

“There’s nothing they can depend on, so the teachers can’t assign topics and have the students use multiple sources” to research them, Weakly said. “It’s a real tragedy because it’s not supporting the curriculum and that impacts the classroom.”

Fewer than one-third of California schools has a trained librarian, and the per-pupil book budget at the average public high school is half what it is at some California Youth Authority detention facilities. The average school library has about 13 books per pupil, compared to a national average of about 18 or more. As many as 85% of the nonfiction books are more than 20 years old.

The problem is not new. California always has depended on local school districts’ whims to fund its libraries and, unlike other states, never has set minimum standards. But five years ago, the quality of school libraries worsened dramatically when Los Angeles and school districts across the state--faced with recession-squeezed budgets--slashed book purchases, closed libraries and laid off hundreds of librarians in elementary and junior high schools.

Now, however, the school financial picture is brightening. But rather than restocking library shelves, most schools are spending more to jump on the computer bandwagon. This year, California schools received about $1,500 per classroom just for one-time purchases. And according to one survey, nearly 80% of the districts spent that money on computer technology.

“You can’t use the technology unless you can read, and the way you learn to read is not from a screen, it’s real reading,” said Barbara Jeffus, a state Department of Education school library consultant.

A growing body of research shows that well-stocked and professionally staffed school libraries are fundamental to learning, instilling in students a love of literature, as well as providing them opportunities to go beyond textbooks and explore topics independently.

Yet California supports its libraries--now known in educational parlance as library media centers--the same way it pays for playground equipment, relying largely on charitable grants, PTA bake sales and penny drives to stock the shelves and on volunteers to check out books.

The result is “miseducation of children in one of the wealthiest states in one of the wealthiest countries in the world,” state schools chief Delaine Eastin said when she visited Heninger last year.

Still, Heninger is better off than many schools. Many have no library at all. And at least Heninger employs a part-time aide to check out and reshelve books; at many schools, students are not allowed to take books home because there is no system for making sure they are returned.

Also, Heninger received $5,000 this year from a grant program to which taxpayers can donate when they file their state income tax. The school is one of 218 in the state--out of 2,500 that applied--to receive the grants, and Heninger is using the money to expand its holdings of Spanish-language books and magazines.

The donation program, which resulted from legislation Eastin co-sponsored when she was in the Assembly, has generated more than $500,000 for school libraries. Eastin kicked in an equal amount from discretionary funds she administers.

That amount is all that comes from Sacramento to directly support library programs.

By contrast, Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposed budget for next year contains $10 million to set up a model for how school and public libraries might stretch their resources by joining forces. Further, the budget proposes spending $100 million as a down payment on the multibillion-dollar job of installing computers in every classroom.

Richard Moore, the librarian at Bolsa Grande High School in Garden Grove, persuaded Eastin to co-sponsor the tax donation program--partly to make a point.

“I never imagined it would provide the kind of money necessary,” Moore said. “What I like about it is that now I can point to the fact that California funds its school libraries the same way it funds endangered species.”

In some districts, such as Torrance, the elementary school libraries are sponsored and paid for by the PTA.

The librarian at Fern School is Julie Berry, a parent of a fifth-grader. She works six to eight hours a day without pay, often taping the covers of worn books during the evenings. This year is better than before, because the library tripled in size by moving from a tiny storage room to a walled-off space within a kindergarten room. The book and materials budget, supplied entirely by the PTA, is $4,000--roughly enough to purchase one new book for every two children.

“We’re trying to educate everyone to the fact that the library benefits all of our students . . . and people are coming around,” Berry said.

But librarians say that no matter how well-intentioned they are, untrained volunteers are a poor substitute for professionals who can teach students how to conduct research and evaluate information. A librarian’s expertise also is essential, they say, in selecting which materials to buy and even evaluating sites on the Internet for children to visit.

A librarian “knows the entire curriculum and can plug kids into materials they and their teachers would not otherwise find,” said Sandy Schuckett, the librarian at El Sereno Middle School in Los Angeles.

Now, however, many schools are pushing hard to get computers in every classroom and, in some cases, treating the Internet and its vast, uncataloged array of information as a substitute for a good library.

Nationally, expenditures for educational technology will exceed $4 billion this year, 10 times what will be spent on library books. Even school libraries are joining in the computer spending spree. In 1994, for the first time, school libraries spent more money on computers and other technology than they did on books, according to an annual survey by the School Library Journal.

That trend worries many librarians, but most are trying to influence the purchase of computer technology rather than stand in the way. They believe computers can be an important tool--especially for keeping track of books and teaching students to track down information--but they believe purchasing them should not come at the expense of books.

“Technology is very expensive,” said Teddi Morris, the librarian at Hueneme High School in Oxnard, the only school in Ventura County to receive a $5,000 state library grant. After buying hardware and software, schools have to spend money on supplies, such as computer paper, maintenance, training and more. Meanwhile, the library’s book budget is a quarter of what it was in the 1980s.

LAUSD’s head librarian, Bonnie O’Brian, has built a model elementary school library that she uses to show teachers and principals how technology and a well-chosen collection can make it possible to boost student learning by assigning open-ended research topics.

The model, which is set up near her office west of downtown, includes three computers--one for students’ use in finding books by typing in a single word or topic, one for keeping track of who has checked out which book, and one for accessing the Internet and operating CD-ROMs such as encyclopedias or the complete works of Shakespeare.

Ideally, a model library also would have about 10 books per student and about 5% of them would be replaced each year.

But the Los Angeles district is neither pushing schools to adopt the model nor offering the funds to pay for it. “Schools need to build library support into their regular budget but, instead, they budget nothing and if someone gives them money they use that . . . which is why they’re in the situation they’re in,” O’Brian said.

For example, the library at the 1,450-student Rosemont School near downtown Los Angeles was virtually empty after the staff removed its old books. But it since has been expanded, renovated and restocked--a total investment of $60,000 or more--with half the money coming from a private foundation called the Wonder of Reading, started by the Pacific Theatres Corp.

The foundation has completed six make-overs so far and plans to do four more every year. Most of the district’s libraries are deplorable, said Christopher Forman, CEO of Pacific Theatres. “They’re not places that adults have paid attention to, so no one has sent that message that children ought to be interested in going there,” he said.

The library at Kittridge School in Van Nuys also has undergone a resurgence, after the school sent two teachers to library seminars O’Brian runs. The school was selected to test the computer system O’Brian recommends, and now students such as sixth-grader Natalia Sandoval can type in the name of a topic, such as North Korea, and locate resource books.

Except that the library did not have any books on North Korea. Her next stop was a CD-ROM encyclopedia, except that machine was being used by another student. Finally, she pulled out a volume of a traditional encyclopedia.

Natalia said her favorite library activity, however, is reading fiction, and she already has read most of that in the collection. “I love reading,” she said. “Fiction is really what got me interested in reading.”

Schuckett, the El Sereno school librarian, had $6,400 in federal funds to spend this year, a third less than last year. In the past, all of that would have been spent on books. But now about half goes for CD-ROMs containing summaries of magazine and journal articles. And she scraped together money from other sources to add two computer workstations to the existing five.

If computers are the wave of the future, however, the past is nearby in the library that features a grandly beautiful oak-coffered ceiling. The book collection includes numerous 1960s-era books about “Negro” history, a 1939 book for adolescent girls suggesting that “smoking does develop a hold on some people” and a 1949 book that tells teenage boys they should praise their mothers for their hard work cleaning, cooking and ironing.

“In my heart of hearts, I would prefer the books, but I also see the need for computers,” Schuckett said. “This district gives you zero money per student . . . so we have to scrounge around.”

Ana Polio, a student at Los Angeles High School, the district’s oldest and once its academic showcase, complained that she was recently researching Frieda Kahlo, a famous Mexican artist, and could find only a single volume in the library. “We have to have more books,” she said. “Sometimes we look and there’s not enough information.”

Los Angeles High librarian Pat Ephgrave agrees the school needs more books and says she is trying to purchase them. But most of those she is buying are at the fifth- and sixth-grade level because that is how well most students at the school read.

Meanwhile, the school plans to spend $5,500 to hire a consultant to design a school-wide computer network. And, in May, the school plans to rename its library for one of its famous graduates, science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, to kick off a fund-raising drive for computers.

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The Book on Libraries

California’s school libraries are among the most-neglected in the United States, according to the American Library Assn. Some statistical examples of the problem:

* California ranks 50th in librarians per pupil. To move up to 49th, the state’s schools would have to hire 3,000 more. To reach the national average, 5,000 more would be needed.

* California averages 13 books per pupil. But 85% of the nonfiction books were published 20 years ago; 40% were published 30 years ago. The national average without California? 18.

* Total California spending per pupil: Including gifts, grants and donations: $3.60. National: $20.40.

Sources: School Library Journal, California Department of Education