In a Maryland school library, empty shelves are about to get emptier

In a Maryland school library, empty shelves are about to get emptier

A fourth-grade girl with Velcro straps on her pink and white tennis shoes wishes her school library had enough books to ensure that when she finishes reading one she enjoys, she could walk over to a shelf and pick a similar one.

“Sometimes I just choose the same book, because I can’t find one I like,” she says as she sits at a table in her school’s cafeteria.

Near her sits a long-legged fifth-grader who wishes the library had more comfortable chairs. The chairs there now have short legs and hard backs.

Next to her sits a fifth-grade girl who is tired of looking at the library’s brown and bare shelves. She wishes those shelves were at least painted in brighter “more fun” colors.

Getting children to read more can sometimes pose a challenge. But students at Oxon Hill Elementary School in Prince George’s County, Md., know exactly what would help pull them into their school’s library and make them want to stay there. They also know that the grown-ups around them have been trying to fulfill their wishes.

While the nation has been focusing on book bans, school libraries all around us have gone without enough (noncontroversial) books. Or inviting furniture. Or amenities that would help create a sense of community. Oxon Hill is one of those schools.

Her book empowers Black children, and hopefully won’t enrage adults

For the past year, staff members and parents have been working to raise money to give students at the school the library of their dreams. But they remain far from their goal. I hadn’t planned to tell you about the library, but then I saw it while visiting the school recently for another purpose. It’s impossible to walk through the building and not notice the library. It sits smack in the middle of an open space between hallways.

The library, in some ways, is like many school libraries. It is decorated with posters that feature cartoonish animals and words that encourage young minds to get lost in books. “Reading Helps you Imagine,” reads one. “Come. Stay. Read a great tale!” reads another.

But, unlike some libraries, it also has this: empty shelves that are about to get emptier.

A few years ago, the school had to remove a large number of books as part of a weeding process that is required by the state to make sure old and damaged books don’t remain on the shelves. The school’s librarian, Jannie Cobb, said another weeding process will require her to remove 5 percent more of the school’s books by April.

“I understand the reasoning, because you do want to have up-to-date collections,” Cobb, whose official title at the school is media specialist, told me when I asked about the state of the library.

Removing the books has not been the problem, she said. Replacing them and adding more popular titles has been the challenge because of the school’s limited resources. About 80 percent of the school’s 229 students qualify for free and reduced lunch, and the school does not have an active PTA, which is how many schools raise extra funds. The library collects some funds through the Scholastic Book Fair, but that money does not stretch far, Cobb said.

The library at the school is decorated with posters that encourage reading.

Right now, a child at the school who finishes “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and wants to keep reading through the series will find the library’s collection incomplete. The same is true for the popular graphic novels by Dav Pilkey.

“There are so many series that are incomplete because we don’t have the resources to put them in place and put them in kids’ hands,” Cobb said. “It really tears at my heart when kids come into the library and they are looking for books and they aren’t finding the books they want. Then they say, ‘There are no books in there for me.’”

Cobb has wishes, too, for the library. She would like to see it get more comfortable furniture, partitions that offer some soundproofing so she can give lessons without surrounding noises distracting students and more “books, books and books.”

“I hope that the library will be transformed into an inviting place of wonder where kids will want to come in and lose themselves in the stories contained on the shelves, so that they forget about whatever problems may exist at home or in their lives, at least for a little while,” she said. “This will, I hope, help to transform their lives as well so that they begin to see themselves as future teachers, lawyers, doctors, policemen and firefighters, and know that it is attainable.”

The valentine I gave myself — the braces I should have gotten as a child

Sibigi Lipford-Transou, who became the school’s principal last year, said she noticed the state of the library the first day she walked through the building. She recalled her first thought: “I can’t be the only one this bothers.”

Since then, school officials have met with an architectural firm to get ideas for making improvements, and the school community has held two fundraisers for the library. Lipford-Transou said the estimated cost for making the improvements is about $25,000, and the fundraisers have so far brought in about $9,000.

“It’s nowhere near the amount we need,” she said. Even so, she said, the children and their families are proud of what they have been able to raise.

Last year’s fundraiser ended with Lipford-Transou and the school’s vice principal sitting on a stage, taking pies to the face. They had agreed to that public punishment if the fundraising amount hit a certain benchmark.

“That took me out of my comfort zone,” Lipford-Transou said. “That’s how much I wanted to improve that library.”

Lipford-Transou said she hopes to create the library students and the staff want. She also wants to add computers, so that parents who may not have access to one at home can come in to fill out forms and take care of other online needs.

The school, which has a student body that is mostly Latino and African American, faces many of the same challenges as schools across the country. One is absenteeism. Another is the lack of transportation for some students who are left to walk routes that aren’t ideal. Those issues take time and collaboration to fix. Improving a library just takes will and money — and the school has one and is working on the other.

Cobb said the fundraisers have energized the students, and now they don’t only ask her if she has the latest “Dog Man” book.

“They come to me and say, ‘When are they going to renovate the library?’” she said. “I tell them, ‘We’re still working on it.’”