President Trump’s proposed 2019 federal budget calls for the elimination the only program that supports school librarians: the Innovative Approaches to Literacy grants. With just under $27 million dollars in funds available across the entire country, it’s not a lot of funding. But those limited federal funds are already spent very smartly. They go to professional development for school librarians, and to help provide equity between poor and rich districts’ book budgets.
We don’t believe it is a good idea to eliminate IAL funding when our schools have so many challenges. We don’t want to see the school librarians have fewer resources for kids in need. IAL is a “competitive grant” which means that only well-thought-out proposals from school librarians get funded. We think that having professional, trained school librarians helping kids read at grade level - and ensuring that there are books for the most disadvantaged kids in their school libraries - is a high-impact use of our tax dollars.
If you agree that the Innovative Approaches to Literacy grants should continue in the FY 2019 budget, please email your members of the House and Senate now. If you want to help ensure that school librarians are there to help kids read at grade level, please let your members of Congress know about your personal priorities for how we educate our children.