L.A. School’s Library Goes From Shabby to Stellar

For the past decade, libraries have been disappearing from schools throughout Los Angeles, the victims of age, neglect, budget cuts and growing enrollments that literally squeezed them out of existence.

That was the case at James A. Foshay Learning Center just west of USC: In July 1995, the school closed its dilapidated library on the second floor because administrators needed temporary office space. The books were so old that there was no thought of keeping most of them--teachers, students and parents were invited to cart them away.

But this story, like those of O. Henry, was destined to have a surprise ending. For Howard Lappin, the school’s hard-charging principal, had no intention of letting the library die.

He sought out Dale Buboltz, a librarian who had won national accolades for his work at another school in Los Angeles and was looking for a new challenge. The principal told him: “Build me the state-of-the-art library, the best there is.”

Some 2 1/2 years, $1 million and a heart bypass operation later, Buboltz has done it. This week, he will preside over the grand opening of Foshay’s new library, designed to serve its 3,200 students from kindergarten through high school.

As you might expect, there are electronic gizmos galore, offering Internet access, checkout convenience, research capabilities and a security system to make sure books do not simply “walk.”

But at the heart of the project is an old-fashioned vision--of children curled up with a book. Buboltz decided to do whatever it takes to achieve that, even if it meant placing adult-sized chairs in the picture-book area so high school students wouldn’t feel ashamed if these were the only books they could read.

“We were constantly thinking, ‘What is it we want to accomplish within this space?’ ” Buboltz said. “For me, the purpose of the library is to motivate reading.”

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Lappin, meanwhile, wanted to avoid the make-do attitude too common in education, especially in schools serving poor children in urban settings. “The philosophy here,” he said, “is that . . . we’re not going to put up with anything that’s not the best.”

It’s no secret that the level of reading in California schools has become something of a disgrace. National tests show that the state’s fourth-graders, on average, read about as well as those in Mississippi and the island of Guam. Although the causes of the low scores are complicated, California’s school libraries--documented as the skimpiest in the country--can’t have helped.

Other states average between 16 and 25 books per pupil, but school libraries in the Golden State have about 11 volumes per student. And many of the books are old--the average nonfiction offering in a California school library was published in 1973.

Nationally, there’s one library-media teacher for every 780 students. In California, it’s one for every 3,193 kids.

To begin to reverse that situation, the Los Angeles Unified School District this year allocated about $5.3 million to improve libraries and hire more librarians. But that’s only $4 per pupil.

At Foshay, Buboltz estimates that he spent $250,000 on books alone--nearly $80 per student. Even so, that only provided 10,000 volumes, a bare beginning of what he envisions. For, of course, he’s starting from scratch.

The old library dated from 1924, when Foshay was built as an elementary school. It was so dim and dingy that few mourned when it was gutted.

Creating a new one was a partnership of two award-winning educators. Lappin has been cited often for his work at Foshay, for the use of technology, for instance, or for forming an alliance with USC. He is the Assn. of California School Administrators’ current “Principal of the Year” and previously was named a “Hero of Education” by Reader’s Digest.

Another to get that last honor a few years back was Buboltz, a 57-year-old elementary school teacher turned librarian who was cited for work at South Gate Middle School. That’s where Lappin recruited him. “This is his baby,” the principal said of the new library.

About two-thirds of the cost came from state bond funds set aside for modernizing schools and making them earthquake safe. An additional $250,000 came from state education grants and funds controlled by the teachers, who voted to turn over to Buboltz money that might have gone into their classrooms. A local charity, the “Wonder of Reading,” chipped in $25,000.

The result was a library nearly double the size of the old one, expanding into an adjacent storage room and classroom. The former storage room now houses a dozen computers, arranged around twin hexagonal pedestals. Six will be hooked up for Internet browsing and six are electronic catalogs that also give students access to the texts of 50 magazines, encyclopedias and almanacs.

The old classroom is painted in reds, greens and blues and includes a carpeted amphitheater for reading to groups of students or watching puppet shows.

“I do love what happened in here,” Buboltz says of that area, which also has a rocking chair so he can settle in and read to the kids, or explain the meaning of a “lending” library.

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Everything here is designed with books in mind--and to advance Buboltz’s philosophy that you “use anything” to seduce kids to read.

Right at the front door, he parks a wheeled set of shelves you can’t miss seeing from the hallway. The top shelf features “horror” books such as the “Goosebumps” series that’s popular with youth today. Joke books occupy the second shelf. And the bottom one is reserved for volumes from the “Babysitters Club” series. To the right of the door is a shelf of comic books, labeled “Hot!” in fluorescent orange.

Last week, when a class arrived for an introduction to the library, the teacher told Buboltz that she could hardly get the students to open a book. When Buboltz showed them his cart of books, they swarmed around it.

He makes no apologies for catering to the transitory tastes of popular culture. Once he gets the kids inside, they’ll find the works of Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe.

Though the official opening is to come, Buboltz began introducing the kids to the facility last week, orienting one class at a time to the rules--yes, you have to return the books--then setting them loose.

Within minutes, one group of first-graders was lounging about the carpeted amphitheater paging through stiff-spined books on dolphins, ducks and donkeys. Dominic Ashford, 6, said these were not like the four books he had at home, which had been colored on and had torn pages.

The picture book area that the first-graders were using is where Buboltz put adult chairs, too, so high school students would feel welcome. He also made sure the sign there was age-neutral, calling it, “The Reading Place.” The books are not called “children’s books,” but “quick reads.”

The library’s shelves were imported from Sweden. At either end of the main shelf area are six study carrels featuring desk lamps with green glass sconces.

Above the checkout desk is a television screen split four ways, displaying images fed by security cameras. Theft is one reason for the meager offerings at many school libraries. Here, chips in the books will set off an alarm if anyone leaves with one that hasn’t been checked out.

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Buboltz still obsesses over tiny flaws only he can see. After the carpeting was installed, he was upset about tufts of thread sticking up from the seams--and insisted they be fixed.

He’s also eager to triple the number of books, especially by adding more in Spanish and more selected to coordinate with classroom lessons. During the past three years, it’s been difficult for teachers to ask students to conduct research or find books for pleasure reading knowing that, for some of them, getting to a public library involved a long bus ride. Some teachers spent thousands of dollars of their own money to assemble classroom libraries as substitutes.

“You have to listen to teachers,” Buboltz said, “and if they want something, you’ve got to have it.”

The grand opening originally was scheduled for last spring, even though the library was not yet complete. It was canceled when, five days before, Buboltz needed an emergency bypass operation. He decided that stress from the once-in-a-lifetime project brought on his condition.

Now the donors and dignitaries are scheduled to assemble for the usual pomp on Tuesday.

But the library already is getting good reviews from the people who count, racking up 700 student visits daily. When more part-time workers are hired, Buboltz plans to keep it open from 6:30 a.m. until 7 p.m.

Trevon Neal, 12, can tell that the library has “way more” than the old one. “It’s got new computers, it’s digital and all, and you can lay back and kick it and read a book.”

Beverly Thymes, also 12, gave a similar verdict. “It’s nice, it’s really, really nice,” she said. “I actually think, in my opinion, that this is the best library I’ve ever been in, for a school library anyway.”