Save Librarians/Libraries in Philly: Sign the Petition

Please sign the following petition to encourage Philadelphia leaders to reinstate school libraries and librarians for the School District of Philadelphia. And then please share the email with your friends and colleagues plus push it out on social media. EveryLibrary (also the creator of SaveSchoolLibrarians.org) is working with PSLA and others to help us get legislation in PA to require public schools to employ certified school librarians. Let’s show them that we can rally local support! Come on! You probably are having a snow day anyway!  More importantly, we need to stand together so that ALL K-12 students have school libraries and certified librarians!

P.S. This is a legitimate site. There will be an opportunity to donate to EveryLibrary after you sign the petition, but you do not have to donate. EveryLibrary is a non-profit but your donations are not tax-deductible as they are used for legislative advocacy work.

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Our students aren't getting the quality education that they deserve! Please sign this petition to help us fight back!

That's because only seven of 214 Philadelphia public schools have functioning libraries with certified teacher librarians. This a dramatic decrease from 80 just 10 years ago. This quiet destruction of the largest classroom in the school has contributed to the need for charity and volunteers to help our students to read. However, research over the last 20 years in many states, including Pennsylvania, shows that students who have access to school libraries with full-time certified teacher librarians (CTLs) demonstrate higher academic achievement, including higher test scores, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Without school librarians, our students just don’t have the same opportunities to succeed later in life.

Please sign the petition to send an email to the school board asking them to reverse these cuts. 
Then, please click here to share the petition on Facebook and Twitter.


Students also rely on school library collections and CTLs to access and analyze information, learn to think critically, develop a love of learning, freely explore the world around them, and develop the information literacy skills that they need in an ever-changing information-rich world. All of this leaves us wondering, don’t Philadelphia students deserve the best possible education?

This disheartening crisis in our schools is part of a larger trend that we can fight together to reverse. Please sign this petition to send an email to the School District of Philadelphia school board and Superintendent William Hite to reverse these cuts and restore our certified teacher librarians.

Although equity is a stated goal of Superintendent Hite’s current Action Plan, SDP superintendents over the last 20 years have overseen one of the most significant dismantlings of school libraries. In the School District of Philadelphia, teachers are forced to create GoFundMe accounts for supplies and school trips. Elementary students write letters to local politicians to plead for new playground equipment. High school seniors reach out to community donors to put books and furniture in an underused classroom to create a school library. Unless we take action now, what will be left in our schools?

Every $10 we raise helps us put this petition in front of over 1,000 Philadelphia residents! 
Please make a donation today.

This is not due to lack of funds; it is about priorities.  The District changed its budget priorities when it deleted school libraries from its overall budget, forcing individual schools to choose between CTLs and other resources. Grants and philanthropic funds have been used to stock classroom libraries, but they do not have the depth or breadth of reading material to meet all students’ literacy needs, and are not economically efficient. Nor do classroom libraries supply the tools and instruction needed to find and evaluate online and print information.Only a school library with a certified teacher librarian can provide this.

Educators know that the loss of school libraries and CTLs has hurt Philadelphia’s children. In 2013, a wise Marjorie Neff, who was then Masterman’s principal (and later became the District’s School Reform Commission chair), spoke to the Inquirer about the loss of the school’s CTL: “The library is the center of our instructional program here. People think about things like the library and counselors as extra. They are not extras.” In fact, the school library is the largest classroom in the school.

Patrick "PC" Sweeney
Political Director

EveryLibrary
http://action.everylibrary.org/

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