This coming Saturday, October 22, at 10 am, be sure to join DCPS librarians at a read-in at our city hall, the Wilson Building (1350 Pennsylvania Ave. NW), to protest the DC council not passing legislation that would provide a librarian for every DCPS school.
Specifically, the Students’ Right to Read Amendment act is in danger of disappearing altogether unless a vote is held on it before the end of 2022. Recall that the bill had a hearing almost a year ago–and has since been stalled with the council chair, Phil Mendelson, despite broad support.
Once the bill is passed, DCPS will be required to have a full-time certified librarian in all its schools–something that it doesn’t do every year (or sometimes any year), even as librarians are fundamental for reading, understanding, and basic literacy.
We all know that there are many inequities in and across our schools–so if you can, come out on Saturday to demand that DC solves one of those inequities right now, by ensuring better reading and literacy across our city with librarians and school libraries for all.
See the flyer below for more information.
educationdc 
Can someone help me understand why this bill wasn’t passed last year? It is super simple and other than the vice-chancellor’s testimony, it was 100% supported in the testimony and co-sponsored by over half the Council! A “shoe-in” of the first order. What happened?
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Well, IMO the best we can do is to guess:
Chairman Mendelson has indicated he is more interested in DCPS budget stability than in equity. Librarians would provide more equity if they’re at every school.
Then, too, with all the bleating about test scores going down, high-impact tutoring, and concerns about literacy, there’s more of a silence about librarians–even though librarians help with literacy and improving reading scores. That suggests that most of the folks decrying test scores, promoting tutoring, and/or worrying over literacy are not involved with DCPS–because if they were, they’d embrace having staffing to help with all of those things baked into every school’s professional array. Many charters have no school libraries, much less librarians–and don’t want them.
So it would appear the powers that be don’t care. So we have to make them care.
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