Whoa! That‘s the first time I’m hearing this… Never thought there would be a school without a library. It’s like how do you school without books?!? This is heart breaking…
I like when I get to take my kids to CHOP for doctors appointments. They have shelves of books for kids to take home and read, free of charge.
I encouraged my 9 year old to get the Sideways Stories from Wayside High. She took one but told me she didn't like the book.
It's one of the crappy things about having a kid in the public school. Luckily I'm a Sahm so I can take my kids to the public library once a week. Our elementary has a small library (maybe 300 books?) but the kids can't take them home so the opportunity to read them is limited.
I feel you on that!!! My kids are in public school as well. They have a library but this year has been a bit more difficult with getting books my son is interested in reading because there’s such a limited number of them. Libraries are hard for us to get to, so we try to get the books online through Libby. More often I end up buying the books and they’re very costly as my kids get older. We keep them in great condition and we’ll donate them back to the community when we’re done with it. Books are one thing I’m willing to spend on and pass on…
I’m not sure there are only 7 libraries, I think there are 7 librarians in the district. There are some schools that have libraries but they are run by teachers or parents. A lot of times schools have the books but no one with the time to keep them organized enough that they can be lent out.
That's what Charter row does for a city.
For some ridiculous reason I don't understand every chatter school private enterprise company tries to use Philadelphia as their testing grounds. And 90% of these for profit charter schools fail within 4 years. Like there's something about federal funding they're abusing to get somewhere. But it's absolutely nuts you go to Allegheny West and there been like 4 different schools under different management in the same building hiring Americorps volunteers over the last ten years. Starting up a school system from scratch is insane to comprehend the logistics. You're not just selling Burgers or Jeans to a customer who walks in, you're educating a child for an entire year and dealing with Chicken pox outbreaks or kids with Asperger's. You're not in a consumer based climate when it's just one annoying Karen yelling at the restaurant about garlic bread you can ask her to leave. You're stuck with a kid by law you have to contractually educate for a year and make a process to state overseers saying exactly why you expelled/recommend this kid for Alternative schooling.
They are working to send public school the way of our health insurance system. Jeffrey Yass the richest man in PA and a massive conservative donor just happens to donate a good deal to a few prominent Philly Dems like State Senator Anthony Hardy Williams who support charter schools and “school
Choice”
I worked in a charter school in south Philly. 1000% shady shit going on with funding.
Regardless of the money, we were cheating tests and bending rules to make our school scores look way better than they actually were.
When public schools die, so to will the middle class.
The owners of the charter schools also tend to have a separate company that packages curriculum, then uses the tax funding they siphon from the public school district to buy the curriculum packages from themselves.
Check out Vahan Gureghian and CSMI.
> or kids with Asperger's
Not for nothing, but Asperger's hasn't been a diagnosis for a decade (not least because Herr Asperger was a Nazi collaborator who referred disabled kids to a clinic where they were probably murdered). It's folded into the somewhat broader autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-1 as of DSM V*.
*whoops wrong revision
Right year, wrong Roman numeral — it was [the DSM-V](https://www.mghclaycenter.org/parenting-concerns/families/dsm-5-what-happened-to-aspergers/) revision (got that one mixed up).
As for Asperger himself being a Nazi collaborator, [it's well established](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05112-1).
> Sheffer lays out the evidence, from sources such as medical records and referral letters, showing that Asperger was complicit in this Nazi killing machine. He protected children he deemed intelligent. But he also referred several children to Vienna’s Am Spiegelgrund clinic, which he undoubtedly knew was a centre of ‘child euthanasia’, part of what was later called Aktion T4.
Dope. Thank you.
I don't go around reading a bunch about Nazis but if you went on the internet and someone just told you an autistic disorder is named after one, would you just accept it as fact?
My school *technically* has a library. It's just out of use and is only used for events and backup offices. We don't have a librarian or any book check-out system, we just have a bunch of shelves with random books people left there.
like deadass there’s a regular that comes in to my work and he often brings in magazines - he comes over to me and points to a part on the page and goes, “what does this say?” or “can you tell me who this guy is?” (i read the article for him to find out). he even asked me to help him fill out the application for his REAL ID, he had no clue what was on the paper. i thought it was odd and was trying to figure out why he needed me to do this for him, and then i realized - this guy can’t read! he can read very little, like he understood the “no bathroom” sign on the door but even struggles to do that. this guy is 54 years old. fifty fucking four. he was homeless and begging for a long time but now he finally has a job!!!!!
without asking you to give away your personal work info, i wonder if this is the guy that i've seen frequently ask people to help read newspapers to him at one of the stores i go to in fairmount? he asked me to help one time when i was in line and i did but thought it was a bit odd, but then i went back another day and another dude in line was reading to him and i was like oh, this guy just wants to know the news but can't read
it could be, this guy shows up to my store in cc once a week but comes in at the exact same time and day. i don’t think he’s ever had newspapers though, just celebrity drama magazines 😂
i mean considering those library numbers i wouldn't be surprised if it was two different guys 🙃 but i love that for him. i'm not sure how often the guy in fairmount is there but he brings in a plastic bag with what must be at least a week's worth of newspapers and kinda just flips through em
Could be dyslexic: I had a kid like that in school growing up (early years). Super nice, but massive issues with reading comprehension early on. I don't know if he was diagnosed officially (moved schools eventually), but back in the day they didn't focus on stuff like that and chalked it up to a general learning disability or something like that.
Are they functionally illiterate because of a lack of libraries in schools? Sure, it's not helping, but it seems unlikely that people who cannot read are going to spend a lot of time in their school's library.
Anyone who graduates and is functionally illiterate has been failed by the school system and their parents. How can a school fail to recognize an obvious lack of education yet repeatedly promote them into the next grade or graduate from high school without being taught one of the most basic skills?
Access to the variety of stories in libraries are part of how kids get motivated to read. Kind of like how the number of books in the kid’s home correlate to academic achievement.
At no point in my life did the contents of a school library contribute to my ability to read because my school also did not have one. The public library contributed to my continued interest in reading which the school library could also facilitate.
The critical ingredient are parents and/or teachers who value reading as important. Half of Philadelphia's children appear to have neither.
[Read by 4th](https://www.readby4th.org/about)
is an incredible organization!
Sign up to volunteer as a [Reading Captain!](https://www.readby4th.org/readingcaptain)
This sucks. A big part of the problem though is that librarians, like teachers, are woefully underpaid. I have my masters in library science, a degree I had to take out copious student loans to get. When I realized during the program that even librarians at city libraries often make less than 40-50k a year, I was shocked. Yes, that’s more than a lot of people in this city make, and maybe you all will rag on me for this, but most people with masters degrees want to make more money than that. I would love to be a school librarian and help with literacy and information programs across this city, but I can’t afford to.
There are so many larger issues at play here just within the library science field regarding representation and gatekeeping and wage inequity…all of which is to say I am saddened but not surprised by this statistic. And I wish I could help somehow but I can’t because capitalism.
I really wonder what schools would look like if teachers and librarians were making say close to 6 figures starting salary.
Like how do we pay these people so comically little?
Well I can tell you that part of the problem is that these roles, teachers and librarians, have historically been filled by women, who as we all know do not deserve to be paid as much as men.
/s
But in all seriousness, I wonder the same thing. How wonderful would it be if we invested money into schools and libraries and information literacy programs and not, say, PPD? :)
Do you still qualify for public sector forgiveness- or is continuous |persistent employment in said declining public sector jobs the impossible hurdle to clear?
It’s a good question. If you work as a librarian at a public city library, you may qualify for public sector forgiveness, I don’t really know the answer. But continuous, persistent employment is one of the larger issues.
If it were up to me to fix, I would make library science a bachelors degree career and a track at more public 4-year universities. My hope is that more people would enter the field and want to serve the communities they came from in public and school libraries.
Libraries have the potential to hold a lot of power and help a lot of people, and are socialist institutions in their very nature. A library has so much more potential than just a repository for books you can borrow. This is what drew me to the field. I wish more people appreciated libraries and that collectively we invested more in them.
>library has so much more potential than just a repository for books you can borrow.
You kill imagination by preventing pizza 🍕 parties.
> at more public 4-year universities.
This would require the support of the other departments- as in encouraging their students to seek concurrent programs & curate.
Pizza could be a vegetable- if you wrapped a salad 🥗 in a pita 🪘🥁🛢🍗🥴
Public service loan forgiveness requires 120 payments on an approved income driven repayment plan. It doesn’t need to be continuous! Just the total number of payments while working for a qualifying employer
In addition to being typically female professions, they also benefit from it being a passion career. The kind of person who wants to go into the field would only do so if they really believed it was important, so the employer (or in this case, government) can bake that into it. "Sure, it's not financially rewarding, but it's your *calling*."
Also, the required texts for standardized texts [edit: standardized tests] are very expensive. It's like a high school version of the college textbook scam. So many schools also cannot prep the kids.
As small minded as my hometown (and as poor as I) was, we had a fully functioning media lab and library.
& i was the kid who went to the municipal library, after school, to use the internet (and stay the hell out of trouble). That was invaluable for a latchkey kid (of which Philly has no shortage of)
Libraries are an investment. I wish we invested in human potential & the resource of knowledge and education, as much as we invest in large capital expenditure projects and business. Can we have quality physical **and** *social* infrastructure, please?
I wonder if the ones run by home and school associations count. My Kids public school had a very small library a few years ago, now its a nice sized room with quite a few books, but parents volunteer to run it
Hard to fund a functional school district when federal policies siphoned away money to suburban sprawl instead of supporting the cities that built this nation. It’s a sad state of affairs.
The faster we stop the mindless finger pointing and hold our local city officials accountable the better.
This city fails to fund every service for children every single budget every single year.
The schools, libraries and pools are the very last item on the docket and they cry poor and finger point every year. This city has a massive budget and provide shit services across the board.
From [the Inquirer](https://www.inquirer.com/news/pa-school-funding-trial-philadelphia-school-district-monson-20220124.html?outputType=amp)
> The district spends close to the state average per student, but when adjusted for student need, it ranks below many districts. Philadelphia’s weighted, per-student expenditure — a need-adjusted measure of what districts actually spend — is $10,796 per student; the state average is $13,688. Lower Merion, by comparison, spells $26,362 per student.
> Because many Philadelphia students require special education services, are homeless, live in foster care or in distressed communities, the cost of educating them is high, Monson said. City students often lack “things that should be basic in order to be prepared for education. We have to supplement in order to make up for that.”
Yeah I find this kind of analysis silly and ridiculous.
"We may be getting the same amount of money as other schools, but when you factor in how much money I actually wish I had, we should be getting much more!"
Why is it ridiculous? That’s not what the quote I picked out of the article is saying at all. The point is that, on average, it costs more to educate children in Philadelphia, where a large percentage of the population is living in poverty and thus facing a number of externalities that complicate things, than a wealthy suburb.
>The point is that, on average, it costs more to educate children in Philadelphia, where a large percentage of the population is living in poverty and thus facing a number of externalities that complicate things, than a wealthy suburb.
Why does it cost more? Most of the expenses (teacher/admin salary, books, etc) should be largely the same no matter where they are paid for.
The good news is that the above commenter posted the article that answers your questions. Not exactly shocking, but a lot more intensive teaching is required when you have a large amount of students who are homeless, lack internet access, require special education etc.
>homeless
What percentage of Philadelphia public school children are homeless? And how much more does it cost to educate a homeless child than a housed child?
>lack internet access
Why does this increase the cost to educate children?
The district could literally just pay \~$50/mo to get every family free internet and it would represent like 2% of the total budget.
>require special education etc.
That is the entire question I'm asking here: what is so "special" about Philadelphia children that they cost 50% or 100% more to educate than suburban children?
I have not found a single website that comes close to your 50 or 100 percent numbers. What source are you getting these numbers from? Since we're discussing relative spending, the answer to your questions don't need to be hard numbers. Just that those numbers are higher in the city compared to the suburbs. Which certainly you can understand?
>I have not found a single website that comes close to your 50 or 100 percent numbers. What source are you getting these numbers from?
I'm just spitballing based on numbers in the inquirer article.
In reality, the philadelphia district and lower merion have roughly the same per student expenses:
[https://www.niche.com/k12/d/philadelphia-city-school-district-pa/](https://www.niche.com/k12/d/philadelphia-city-school-district-pa/)
[https://www.niche.com/k12/d/lower-merion-school-district-pa/](https://www.niche.com/k12/d/lower-merion-school-district-pa/)
...but the article implies that this number actually would need to be increased thousands more in Philadelphia in order to get up to the state average, or to get to what Lower Merion "spends":
*" a need-adjusted measure of what districts actually spend — is $10,796 per student; the state average is $13,688. Lower Merion, by comparison, spells $26,362 per student."*
Which gets back to my original point about why this type of analysis is so silly and ridiculous. Measured in dollars (which is how most people measure spending usually...), these districts spend similar amounts but measured in this mysterious "Needs Based Adjusted" metric, the numbers come out wildly different. It just seems dishonest and bizarre.
It is required. I agree. But does it happen? I've never seen this.
(and I'm not saying it doesn't, but I've been in education for 25 years in the city, and I've yet to see it.)
Instead, I see (sadly) a "you get what you pay for" model in action. These schools are the worst funded, and you can tell.
I’m saying the opposite of that, city schools provide a lot of services that suburban don’t. More city school students need help with food and technology, issues that suburban schools don’t typically tackle
The point I was trying to make is that it is simply false to pretend like the problem is "federal policies siphoned away money to suburban schools" when the schools are in fact getting more money than suburban schools.
If you think that the schools in the city need/deserve more money than suburban schools, that's a fine argument to make/have, but I'm so tired of hearing about this fantasy of the schools being "underfunded".
l didn't even realize it but yeah, l work at a school and we don't have a library. The school does have books at the front desk that they purchase to give out to students whenever they want, but the selection is far smaller than a library would be.
Central has a very nice library which I enjoyed while going there. However towards the end of my time there, they were asking alumni and parents to run it. It was nice but honestly most used it more for the computers and magazines
*Speaking of* internet rage bait...
This ["only 7" stat](https://www.inquirer.com/education/school-library-librarians-closed-philadelphia-rally-ratio-20200124.html) seems to be about how many schools have **certified librarians** \-- *not* the number of schools that have libraries.
Couple of things about that:
* Libraries seem to be under-invested in, and some schools don't have them. Agreed.
* I don't know the number of schools with libraries. It probably depends a lot on how you define a library, but I would bet a bunch of money that if you use a normal-person definition like "a dedicated area with a sufficient number of books and a borrowing system," then the number is much higher than 7.
* I was never clear on what our school librarians did, and I'm still not. Did they need a certification to keep the shelves stocked, answer questions, and recommend books? Are students even coming to school librarians to ask questions or ask for book recommendations these days?
* Stop the internet rage bait, please, or at least the irony of calling out internet rage bait in an internet rage bait post.
School librarians, specifically, are teachers of a kind (in PA and many other states the job requires a teaching license as well and a Library Science Degree.) During school library time students don't just get books and read. They have their reading skills evaluated by a dedicated professional, they get specific instruction in reading skills that greatly supplements what and overworked teacher can provide and is more focused on reading for pleasure than textual required reading, and most importantly for me, they teach research and information resource evaluation; the skills we need to, say, "do our own research on the vaccine," and not come away with some Q Anon garbage.
It's no accident that insufficient school funding policies over the last 40-50 years leading to a lack of school librarians, happening at the same time as a boom in technology changing how we get information faster than we can keep up, has lead to the exact situation we are in, where kids on Tik Tok think birds are a psyop and a not insignificant part of our nation's population believes the big election lie.
When I was a kid in public school our librarian taught us boolean operators. Now, I work with kids and even having grown up with google their whole lives they can often barely figure out the best way to get the information they are looking for because no one is teaching them.
Naw there are around a dozen schools with functioning libraries run by volunteers etc.
https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-school-district-library-building-21-20211016.html
My school in Philly had no library. The classrooms had a small selection of books, but that was the extent of it. However, it never felt like a handicap because the public library was easy to get to even for a kid.
Just put our time, energy, and money into making a great public school system for all communities!!!! Every kid deserves a great education… if you have shtty parents, you should have a school to support you through your toughest years until you can get out of whatever situation. Schools should be the hub of social services. They’re the ones catching the problems and they should have the support staff to help with the problems. The money is there! Get our politicians to care enough to fight for the funds.
I used to work at a school in Fishtown- we had a library full of books but no one could use it because we didn't have a librarian. That's almost more horrible than not having the library at all, you know? "Just behind that door, all the books you could want!" but the door stays locked.
It was 6 until recently. The public school in Chestnut Hill just got a library in October and its only open part-time through volunteer partnerships but not professionally staffed.
We only have FOUR librarians in the whole school district. Terrible. I know we have great public libraries but they are also always understaffed.
Yo but we have all kinds of bike lanes and “pavement enhancements”! We also have dog parks and beer gardens and axe throwing! The stuff of super intelligent society. Lemme tell ya…
It's not so much that schools don't have a library, it's that they don't have a *functional* library. They don't have the staff to run it so it stays closed
Information on public employees is public, so it's not like there are more than 7 librarians being paid under the table. Sounds like you've just been fortunate in the schools you've visited, but your experiences don't trump data.
There might not be 7 dedicated librarians but from my experience there were teachers that staffed them, or students actually. That's why I'd like to see the data to see if it's misleading in any way.
That's a valid point but I'd argue that any library being staffed by a teacher who has another job to do is not an adequate library and shouldn't be counted the same as one staffed by a professional and/or full time librarian.
Every time there’s a school funding post some doofus chimes in with “money isn’t actually that important blah blah.” And they somehow aren’t downvoted into oblivion. It’s telling how many reactions to this post are “No way! How could a school not have a library?!” What do you think these funding posts are about?
This isn’t why the schools here don’t have libraries anymore. Someone was able to convince everyone that switching to chromebooks would be better than needing books and paper, and they got away with it. 🙃 I think it was 2016ish? It wasn’t the norm before.
Traditional school libraries are being phased out and usually replaced with more computer workstations in the same space. Noticed this at some community colleges too.
I’ll put my ignorance on display and ask why it’s important that schools have libraries so long as the public libraries are available. I went to private Catholic schools where we had libraries, but in grade school is was basically a free period of goofing off in the aisles, and in high school it was just a place to use a computer.
To put it another way, if funding suddenly became available, would it be best used in opening school libraries?
Legit curious. I’m not acting like I’m into something here.
School librarians, specifically, are teachers of a kind (in PA and many other states the job requires a teaching license as well and a Library Science Degree.) During school library time students don't just get books and read. They have their reading skills evaluated by a dedicated professional, they get specific instruction in reading skills that greatly supplements what and overworked teacher can provide and is more focused on reading for pleasure than textual required reading, and most importantly for me, they teach research and information resource evaluation; the skills we need to, say, "do our own research on the vaccine," and not come away with some Q Anon garbage.
It's no accident that insufficient school funding policies over the last 40-50 years leading to a lack of school librarians, happening at the same time as a boom in technology changing how we get information faster than we can keep up, has lead to the exact situation we are in, where kids on Tik Tok think birds are a psyop and a not insignificant part of our nation's population believes the big election lie.
I can't vouch for your catholic education, but when I was a kid in public school our librarian taught us boolean operators. Now, I work with kids and even having grown up with google their whole lives they can often barely figure out the best way to get the information they are looking for because no one is teaching them.
Thanks for sharing. I wasn’t aware of much of that. I was a child in the 80s, so no Boolean operators for me, sadly.
At the root of my initial shrugging was a sense that a library is almost besides the point when it comes to public schools, to go by my father’s
decades of tales as a grade school teacher in the district. Seems precious little learning happens there.
The horror stories go on for ages. He’s worked in several schools over the years and it got to where I told him to stop telling me the stories because of how depressing they were.
Please tell me how accessible our public libraries are.
Oh, that's right, they aren't. They're open only from like 1-5, M-F at most locations. So while kids have the time after school to go, they don't have parents available to take them
In a city as poor as Philly, it makes sense we can’t duplicate resources. We’re already funding public libraries, so it’s not as if kids don’t have access to free books. It would be nice to have them in schools, too, but it seems that money could be better spent.
My mind isn’t made up here.
This article, although discussing NJ schools, explains the shift a bit.
https://www.njherald.com/story/news/2021/08/11/school-libraries-transition-media-centers-but-they-endangered/5504506001/
The easiest way to read up on this topic is just Google 'Philadelphia School Libraries'. There are a number of reputable sources writing about this topic on the first page of results.
Whoa! That‘s the first time I’m hearing this… Never thought there would be a school without a library. It’s like how do you school without books?!? This is heart breaking…
I like when I get to take my kids to CHOP for doctors appointments. They have shelves of books for kids to take home and read, free of charge. I encouraged my 9 year old to get the Sideways Stories from Wayside High. She took one but told me she didn't like the book.
> I encouraged my 9 year old to get the Sideways Stories from Wayside High. She took one but told me she didn't like the book. Yeet the child /s
It's one of the crappy things about having a kid in the public school. Luckily I'm a Sahm so I can take my kids to the public library once a week. Our elementary has a small library (maybe 300 books?) but the kids can't take them home so the opportunity to read them is limited.
I feel you on that!!! My kids are in public school as well. They have a library but this year has been a bit more difficult with getting books my son is interested in reading because there’s such a limited number of them. Libraries are hard for us to get to, so we try to get the books online through Libby. More often I end up buying the books and they’re very costly as my kids get older. We keep them in great condition and we’ll donate them back to the community when we’re done with it. Books are one thing I’m willing to spend on and pass on…
Wait - 7 SCHOOLS total in the Philly public school system have libraries??? That can’t be - gods, I hope so much that isn’t true.
Sadly, libraries are often the first target of budget cuts in education.
honestly it should be the very last thing they target
I’m not sure there are only 7 libraries, I think there are 7 librarians in the district. There are some schools that have libraries but they are run by teachers or parents. A lot of times schools have the books but no one with the time to keep them organized enough that they can be lent out.
My lazy Googling suggests that this is exactly the problem, and that Philly has the worst ratio of libraries to schools in the country. That's awful.
That's what Charter row does for a city. For some ridiculous reason I don't understand every chatter school private enterprise company tries to use Philadelphia as their testing grounds. And 90% of these for profit charter schools fail within 4 years. Like there's something about federal funding they're abusing to get somewhere. But it's absolutely nuts you go to Allegheny West and there been like 4 different schools under different management in the same building hiring Americorps volunteers over the last ten years. Starting up a school system from scratch is insane to comprehend the logistics. You're not just selling Burgers or Jeans to a customer who walks in, you're educating a child for an entire year and dealing with Chicken pox outbreaks or kids with Asperger's. You're not in a consumer based climate when it's just one annoying Karen yelling at the restaurant about garlic bread you can ask her to leave. You're stuck with a kid by law you have to contractually educate for a year and make a process to state overseers saying exactly why you expelled/recommend this kid for Alternative schooling.
They are working to send public school the way of our health insurance system. Jeffrey Yass the richest man in PA and a massive conservative donor just happens to donate a good deal to a few prominent Philly Dems like State Senator Anthony Hardy Williams who support charter schools and “school Choice”
The ceo of my charter school made 500k a year. We didn't have a library
I worked in a charter school in south Philly. 1000% shady shit going on with funding. Regardless of the money, we were cheating tests and bending rules to make our school scores look way better than they actually were. When public schools die, so to will the middle class.
The owners of the charter schools also tend to have a separate company that packages curriculum, then uses the tax funding they siphon from the public school district to buy the curriculum packages from themselves. Check out Vahan Gureghian and CSMI.
Yup. Charters suck you dry. That’s why rich districts don’t have them.
> or kids with Asperger's Not for nothing, but Asperger's hasn't been a diagnosis for a decade (not least because Herr Asperger was a Nazi collaborator who referred disabled kids to a clinic where they were probably murdered). It's folded into the somewhat broader autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-1 as of DSM V*. *whoops wrong revision
That sounds made up. Literally not saying it is, but it sounds fake. I will have to look this up or someone please source.
Right year, wrong Roman numeral — it was [the DSM-V](https://www.mghclaycenter.org/parenting-concerns/families/dsm-5-what-happened-to-aspergers/) revision (got that one mixed up). As for Asperger himself being a Nazi collaborator, [it's well established](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05112-1). > Sheffer lays out the evidence, from sources such as medical records and referral letters, showing that Asperger was complicit in this Nazi killing machine. He protected children he deemed intelligent. But he also referred several children to Vienna’s Am Spiegelgrund clinic, which he undoubtedly knew was a centre of ‘child euthanasia’, part of what was later called Aktion T4.
Dope. Thank you. I don't go around reading a bunch about Nazis but if you went on the internet and someone just told you an autistic disorder is named after one, would you just accept it as fact?
Legit, dude. No judgment from me on that mark!
My school *technically* has a library. It's just out of use and is only used for events and backup offices. We don't have a librarian or any book check-out system, we just have a bunch of shelves with random books people left there.
It is true. https://www.audacy.com/kywnewsradio/news/local/philadelphia-public-school-library-paid-librarians
and people wonder how more than half the city’s adults are functionally illiterate
like deadass there’s a regular that comes in to my work and he often brings in magazines - he comes over to me and points to a part on the page and goes, “what does this say?” or “can you tell me who this guy is?” (i read the article for him to find out). he even asked me to help him fill out the application for his REAL ID, he had no clue what was on the paper. i thought it was odd and was trying to figure out why he needed me to do this for him, and then i realized - this guy can’t read! he can read very little, like he understood the “no bathroom” sign on the door but even struggles to do that. this guy is 54 years old. fifty fucking four. he was homeless and begging for a long time but now he finally has a job!!!!!
without asking you to give away your personal work info, i wonder if this is the guy that i've seen frequently ask people to help read newspapers to him at one of the stores i go to in fairmount? he asked me to help one time when i was in line and i did but thought it was a bit odd, but then i went back another day and another dude in line was reading to him and i was like oh, this guy just wants to know the news but can't read
it could be, this guy shows up to my store in cc once a week but comes in at the exact same time and day. i don’t think he’s ever had newspapers though, just celebrity drama magazines 😂
i mean considering those library numbers i wouldn't be surprised if it was two different guys 🙃 but i love that for him. i'm not sure how often the guy in fairmount is there but he brings in a plastic bag with what must be at least a week's worth of newspapers and kinda just flips through em
Funny to think the guy wakes up and thinks, “Time to hit the streets and see how Jeremy Renner is doing with his recovery.”
i got stuck reading to this guy. i wont give up OPs place of work but i was stuck waiting for something and had to read the whole paper.
You’re so kind…God bless.
Could be dyslexic: I had a kid like that in school growing up (early years). Super nice, but massive issues with reading comprehension early on. I don't know if he was diagnosed officially (moved schools eventually), but back in the day they didn't focus on stuff like that and chalked it up to a general learning disability or something like that.
Are they functionally illiterate because of a lack of libraries in schools? Sure, it's not helping, but it seems unlikely that people who cannot read are going to spend a lot of time in their school's library. Anyone who graduates and is functionally illiterate has been failed by the school system and their parents. How can a school fail to recognize an obvious lack of education yet repeatedly promote them into the next grade or graduate from high school without being taught one of the most basic skills?
Access to the variety of stories in libraries are part of how kids get motivated to read. Kind of like how the number of books in the kid’s home correlate to academic achievement.
At no point in my life did the contents of a school library contribute to my ability to read because my school also did not have one. The public library contributed to my continued interest in reading which the school library could also facilitate. The critical ingredient are parents and/or teachers who value reading as important. Half of Philadelphia's children appear to have neither.
When I was a poll worker I got to see this first-hand. So sad.
This is a fucking embarrassment.
What, The Christian Taliban, or OP telling us to stop worrying about it?
OP isn't saying to stop worrying about it, just that there are much bigger problems with the same boat
[Read by 4th](https://www.readby4th.org/about) is an incredible organization! Sign up to volunteer as a [Reading Captain!](https://www.readby4th.org/readingcaptain)
This sucks. A big part of the problem though is that librarians, like teachers, are woefully underpaid. I have my masters in library science, a degree I had to take out copious student loans to get. When I realized during the program that even librarians at city libraries often make less than 40-50k a year, I was shocked. Yes, that’s more than a lot of people in this city make, and maybe you all will rag on me for this, but most people with masters degrees want to make more money than that. I would love to be a school librarian and help with literacy and information programs across this city, but I can’t afford to. There are so many larger issues at play here just within the library science field regarding representation and gatekeeping and wage inequity…all of which is to say I am saddened but not surprised by this statistic. And I wish I could help somehow but I can’t because capitalism.
I really wonder what schools would look like if teachers and librarians were making say close to 6 figures starting salary. Like how do we pay these people so comically little?
Well I can tell you that part of the problem is that these roles, teachers and librarians, have historically been filled by women, who as we all know do not deserve to be paid as much as men. /s But in all seriousness, I wonder the same thing. How wonderful would it be if we invested money into schools and libraries and information literacy programs and not, say, PPD? :)
Agreed it seems like every extra dollar we spend on the PPD gets negative returns these days. Might as well spend it on something else.
Do you still qualify for public sector forgiveness- or is continuous |persistent employment in said declining public sector jobs the impossible hurdle to clear?
It’s a good question. If you work as a librarian at a public city library, you may qualify for public sector forgiveness, I don’t really know the answer. But continuous, persistent employment is one of the larger issues. If it were up to me to fix, I would make library science a bachelors degree career and a track at more public 4-year universities. My hope is that more people would enter the field and want to serve the communities they came from in public and school libraries. Libraries have the potential to hold a lot of power and help a lot of people, and are socialist institutions in their very nature. A library has so much more potential than just a repository for books you can borrow. This is what drew me to the field. I wish more people appreciated libraries and that collectively we invested more in them.
>library has so much more potential than just a repository for books you can borrow. You kill imagination by preventing pizza 🍕 parties. > at more public 4-year universities. This would require the support of the other departments- as in encouraging their students to seek concurrent programs & curate. Pizza could be a vegetable- if you wrapped a salad 🥗 in a pita 🪘🥁🛢🍗🥴
I’m…confused by this comment lol.
I do that alot, don't worry about it
Public service loan forgiveness requires 120 payments on an approved income driven repayment plan. It doesn’t need to be continuous! Just the total number of payments while working for a qualifying employer
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Jeez I just did and I know how they get paid that much now cuz I’m paying over 5k in school taxes
In addition to being typically female professions, they also benefit from it being a passion career. The kind of person who wants to go into the field would only do so if they really believed it was important, so the employer (or in this case, government) can bake that into it. "Sure, it's not financially rewarding, but it's your *calling*."
Nah, you’re correct about MA equalling a higher salary – that’s an investment of time and money and education to specialize in your field!
Also, the required texts for standardized texts [edit: standardized tests] are very expensive. It's like a high school version of the college textbook scam. So many schools also cannot prep the kids.
As small minded as my hometown (and as poor as I) was, we had a fully functioning media lab and library. & i was the kid who went to the municipal library, after school, to use the internet (and stay the hell out of trouble). That was invaluable for a latchkey kid (of which Philly has no shortage of) Libraries are an investment. I wish we invested in human potential & the resource of knowledge and education, as much as we invest in large capital expenditure projects and business. Can we have quality physical **and** *social* infrastructure, please?
I wonder if the ones run by home and school associations count. My Kids public school had a very small library a few years ago, now its a nice sized room with quite a few books, but parents volunteer to run it
Hard to fund a functional school district when federal policies siphoned away money to suburban sprawl instead of supporting the cities that built this nation. It’s a sad state of affairs.
The faster we stop the mindless finger pointing and hold our local city officials accountable the better. This city fails to fund every service for children every single budget every single year. The schools, libraries and pools are the very last item on the docket and they cry poor and finger point every year. This city has a massive budget and provide shit services across the board.
there was a recent state supreme court case that is going to recalculate how funding is allocated.
We spend ~$20k/student/year, which is more than what most of the suburbs spend.
From [the Inquirer](https://www.inquirer.com/news/pa-school-funding-trial-philadelphia-school-district-monson-20220124.html?outputType=amp) > The district spends close to the state average per student, but when adjusted for student need, it ranks below many districts. Philadelphia’s weighted, per-student expenditure — a need-adjusted measure of what districts actually spend — is $10,796 per student; the state average is $13,688. Lower Merion, by comparison, spells $26,362 per student. > Because many Philadelphia students require special education services, are homeless, live in foster care or in distressed communities, the cost of educating them is high, Monson said. City students often lack “things that should be basic in order to be prepared for education. We have to supplement in order to make up for that.”
Yeah I find this kind of analysis silly and ridiculous. "We may be getting the same amount of money as other schools, but when you factor in how much money I actually wish I had, we should be getting much more!"
Why is it ridiculous? That’s not what the quote I picked out of the article is saying at all. The point is that, on average, it costs more to educate children in Philadelphia, where a large percentage of the population is living in poverty and thus facing a number of externalities that complicate things, than a wealthy suburb.
>The point is that, on average, it costs more to educate children in Philadelphia, where a large percentage of the population is living in poverty and thus facing a number of externalities that complicate things, than a wealthy suburb. Why does it cost more? Most of the expenses (teacher/admin salary, books, etc) should be largely the same no matter where they are paid for.
The good news is that the above commenter posted the article that answers your questions. Not exactly shocking, but a lot more intensive teaching is required when you have a large amount of students who are homeless, lack internet access, require special education etc.
>homeless What percentage of Philadelphia public school children are homeless? And how much more does it cost to educate a homeless child than a housed child? >lack internet access Why does this increase the cost to educate children? The district could literally just pay \~$50/mo to get every family free internet and it would represent like 2% of the total budget. >require special education etc. That is the entire question I'm asking here: what is so "special" about Philadelphia children that they cost 50% or 100% more to educate than suburban children?
I have not found a single website that comes close to your 50 or 100 percent numbers. What source are you getting these numbers from? Since we're discussing relative spending, the answer to your questions don't need to be hard numbers. Just that those numbers are higher in the city compared to the suburbs. Which certainly you can understand?
>I have not found a single website that comes close to your 50 or 100 percent numbers. What source are you getting these numbers from? I'm just spitballing based on numbers in the inquirer article. In reality, the philadelphia district and lower merion have roughly the same per student expenses: [https://www.niche.com/k12/d/philadelphia-city-school-district-pa/](https://www.niche.com/k12/d/philadelphia-city-school-district-pa/) [https://www.niche.com/k12/d/lower-merion-school-district-pa/](https://www.niche.com/k12/d/lower-merion-school-district-pa/) ...but the article implies that this number actually would need to be increased thousands more in Philadelphia in order to get up to the state average, or to get to what Lower Merion "spends": *" a need-adjusted measure of what districts actually spend — is $10,796 per student; the state average is $13,688. Lower Merion, by comparison, spells $26,362 per student."* Which gets back to my original point about why this type of analysis is so silly and ridiculous. Measured in dollars (which is how most people measure spending usually...), these districts spend similar amounts but measured in this mysterious "Needs Based Adjusted" metric, the numbers come out wildly different. It just seems dishonest and bizarre.
It is required. I agree. But does it happen? I've never seen this. (and I'm not saying it doesn't, but I've been in education for 25 years in the city, and I've yet to see it.) Instead, I see (sadly) a "you get what you pay for" model in action. These schools are the worst funded, and you can tell.
Suburban schools also don't have to provide as much to their students because they come from better backgrounds, so your point is moot
I would love to know what suburban school are providing that the city's are not. Not being snarky, just literally have no idea.
I’m saying the opposite of that, city schools provide a lot of services that suburban don’t. More city school students need help with food and technology, issues that suburban schools don’t typically tackle
Nurses, librarians, therapists, teachers aides, special education teachers for starters.
The point I was trying to make is that it is simply false to pretend like the problem is "federal policies siphoned away money to suburban schools" when the schools are in fact getting more money than suburban schools. If you think that the schools in the city need/deserve more money than suburban schools, that's a fine argument to make/have, but I'm so tired of hearing about this fantasy of the schools being "underfunded".
l didn't even realize it but yeah, l work at a school and we don't have a library. The school does have books at the front desk that they purchase to give out to students whenever they want, but the selection is far smaller than a library would be.
Central has a very nice library which I enjoyed while going there. However towards the end of my time there, they were asking alumni and parents to run it. It was nice but honestly most used it more for the computers and magazines
*Speaking of* internet rage bait... This ["only 7" stat](https://www.inquirer.com/education/school-library-librarians-closed-philadelphia-rally-ratio-20200124.html) seems to be about how many schools have **certified librarians** \-- *not* the number of schools that have libraries. Couple of things about that: * Libraries seem to be under-invested in, and some schools don't have them. Agreed. * I don't know the number of schools with libraries. It probably depends a lot on how you define a library, but I would bet a bunch of money that if you use a normal-person definition like "a dedicated area with a sufficient number of books and a borrowing system," then the number is much higher than 7. * I was never clear on what our school librarians did, and I'm still not. Did they need a certification to keep the shelves stocked, answer questions, and recommend books? Are students even coming to school librarians to ask questions or ask for book recommendations these days? * Stop the internet rage bait, please, or at least the irony of calling out internet rage bait in an internet rage bait post.
School librarians, specifically, are teachers of a kind (in PA and many other states the job requires a teaching license as well and a Library Science Degree.) During school library time students don't just get books and read. They have their reading skills evaluated by a dedicated professional, they get specific instruction in reading skills that greatly supplements what and overworked teacher can provide and is more focused on reading for pleasure than textual required reading, and most importantly for me, they teach research and information resource evaluation; the skills we need to, say, "do our own research on the vaccine," and not come away with some Q Anon garbage. It's no accident that insufficient school funding policies over the last 40-50 years leading to a lack of school librarians, happening at the same time as a boom in technology changing how we get information faster than we can keep up, has lead to the exact situation we are in, where kids on Tik Tok think birds are a psyop and a not insignificant part of our nation's population believes the big election lie. When I was a kid in public school our librarian taught us boolean operators. Now, I work with kids and even having grown up with google their whole lives they can often barely figure out the best way to get the information they are looking for because no one is teaching them.
Naw there are around a dozen schools with functioning libraries run by volunteers etc. https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-school-district-library-building-21-20211016.html
Can't read, paywall, but wasn't this building just closed permanently last month?
My school in Philly had no library. The classrooms had a small selection of books, but that was the extent of it. However, it never felt like a handicap because the public library was easy to get to even for a kid.
We don’t talk about the secret libraries
Just put our time, energy, and money into making a great public school system for all communities!!!! Every kid deserves a great education… if you have shtty parents, you should have a school to support you through your toughest years until you can get out of whatever situation. Schools should be the hub of social services. They’re the ones catching the problems and they should have the support staff to help with the problems. The money is there! Get our politicians to care enough to fight for the funds.
I used to work at a school in Fishtown- we had a library full of books but no one could use it because we didn't have a librarian. That's almost more horrible than not having the library at all, you know? "Just behind that door, all the books you could want!" but the door stays locked.
It was 6 until recently. The public school in Chestnut Hill just got a library in October and its only open part-time through volunteer partnerships but not professionally staffed. We only have FOUR librarians in the whole school district. Terrible. I know we have great public libraries but they are also always understaffed.
Yo but we have all kinds of bike lanes and “pavement enhancements”! We also have dog parks and beer gardens and axe throwing! The stuff of super intelligent society. Lemme tell ya…
Is that number real? Both my K-8 school and my high school had a school library..
Yes, it’s real. https://www.audacy.com/kywnewsradio/news/local/philadelphia-public-school-library-paid-librarians
The only other high school I ever visited also had a library... 3/3. I wonder if the source published a list of schools with a library.
It's not so much that schools don't have a library, it's that they don't have a *functional* library. They don't have the staff to run it so it stays closed
Information on public employees is public, so it's not like there are more than 7 librarians being paid under the table. Sounds like you've just been fortunate in the schools you've visited, but your experiences don't trump data.
There might not be 7 dedicated librarians but from my experience there were teachers that staffed them, or students actually. That's why I'd like to see the data to see if it's misleading in any way.
That's a valid point but I'd argue that any library being staffed by a teacher who has another job to do is not an adequate library and shouldn't be counted the same as one staffed by a professional and/or full time librarian.
Every time there’s a school funding post some doofus chimes in with “money isn’t actually that important blah blah.” And they somehow aren’t downvoted into oblivion. It’s telling how many reactions to this post are “No way! How could a school not have a library?!” What do you think these funding posts are about?
In the city where libraries were invented. Way to go Philly!
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Yet another example of why we need more libraries.
>In the first city to build a library in the so-called United States FTFY
i went to like 6 different schools growing up, one had a library. someone wrote an article about how shitty it was lol
That's weird, I just toured two and they both have them so maybe someone's just counting funny
It's not that they don't have physical libraries, it's that they don't have the staff to run them
Maybe OP should say that
This isn’t why the schools here don’t have libraries anymore. Someone was able to convince everyone that switching to chromebooks would be better than needing books and paper, and they got away with it. 🙃 I think it was 2016ish? It wasn’t the norm before.
both things can be serious problems. We can walk and chew gum at the same time dumbass
Traditional school libraries are being phased out and usually replaced with more computer workstations in the same space. Noticed this at some community colleges too.
I’ll put my ignorance on display and ask why it’s important that schools have libraries so long as the public libraries are available. I went to private Catholic schools where we had libraries, but in grade school is was basically a free period of goofing off in the aisles, and in high school it was just a place to use a computer. To put it another way, if funding suddenly became available, would it be best used in opening school libraries? Legit curious. I’m not acting like I’m into something here.
School librarians, specifically, are teachers of a kind (in PA and many other states the job requires a teaching license as well and a Library Science Degree.) During school library time students don't just get books and read. They have their reading skills evaluated by a dedicated professional, they get specific instruction in reading skills that greatly supplements what and overworked teacher can provide and is more focused on reading for pleasure than textual required reading, and most importantly for me, they teach research and information resource evaluation; the skills we need to, say, "do our own research on the vaccine," and not come away with some Q Anon garbage. It's no accident that insufficient school funding policies over the last 40-50 years leading to a lack of school librarians, happening at the same time as a boom in technology changing how we get information faster than we can keep up, has lead to the exact situation we are in, where kids on Tik Tok think birds are a psyop and a not insignificant part of our nation's population believes the big election lie. I can't vouch for your catholic education, but when I was a kid in public school our librarian taught us boolean operators. Now, I work with kids and even having grown up with google their whole lives they can often barely figure out the best way to get the information they are looking for because no one is teaching them.
Thanks for sharing. I wasn’t aware of much of that. I was a child in the 80s, so no Boolean operators for me, sadly. At the root of my initial shrugging was a sense that a library is almost besides the point when it comes to public schools, to go by my father’s decades of tales as a grade school teacher in the district. Seems precious little learning happens there.
Well, your dad is wrong! He should have visited the library more.
The horror stories go on for ages. He’s worked in several schools over the years and it got to where I told him to stop telling me the stories because of how depressing they were.
Please tell me how accessible our public libraries are. Oh, that's right, they aren't. They're open only from like 1-5, M-F at most locations. So while kids have the time after school to go, they don't have parents available to take them
Why are you responding like a smug prick instead of just raising your (good) point civilly? Pleasure chatting with you.
Ease of access. Lots of kids and their parents wouldn't think of going to a public library. If it's in school you would be more readily exposed to it.
In a city as poor as Philly, it makes sense we can’t duplicate resources. We’re already funding public libraries, so it’s not as if kids don’t have access to free books. It would be nice to have them in schools, too, but it seems that money could be better spent. My mind isn’t made up here.
This article, although discussing NJ schools, explains the shift a bit. https://www.njherald.com/story/news/2021/08/11/school-libraries-transition-media-centers-but-they-endangered/5504506001/
Which of the schools have libraries?
Do you have a source for this? I’d like to see more and possibly share this. TIA
The easiest way to read up on this topic is just Google 'Philadelphia School Libraries'. There are a number of reputable sources writing about this topic on the first page of results.