No Books, No Reading

The inexcusable shortage of library books at the gleaming, nearly new $9.2-million Gratts Elementary School deprives pupils of the education they need. School district managers need to rectify this problem immediately, before reading ability is permanently damaged.

Children need to read as much as possible in the primary grades to learn basic skills, and in latter grades to build vocabularies. Constant exposure to books is the No. 1 priority. Trips to the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles once every three weeks to borrow three books per pupil are not enough. School visits by Rolling Readers, volunteers who read aloud to children, can help them become interested in reading, but nothing can take the place of a good book to take home.

By national average, school libraries stock 30 books per pupil. In Los Angeles elementary schools the average is 18 books per student. At Gratts, which opened in 1996 near 3rd Street and Lucas Avenue just west of the Harbor Freeway, most library shelves are empty. There is room for up to 25,000 books, but only about 1,000 are available. That’s so few that school officials won’t let pupils take books home. What happened?

Gratts opened before Ruben Zacarias took over as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, but this embarrassing shortage surfaced on his watch. Parents and pupils are waiting for a solution.

Fortunately, they may not have to wait much longer. Zacarias plans to give the school enough money, $150,000, to fill half the shelves from his special book reserve fund, used to allay the textbook shortage. Gov. Pete Wilson and the Democratic-controlled state Legislature have allocated new funds for textbooks and library books.

But there should not have been a delay in the first place. What happened at Gratts provides a lesson in how to prioritize needs when a new school opens. Students should not have to walk nearly a mile to the downtown library to get books to read at home. Books should be just down the hall.