When Deborah Grill was at Roosevelt Middle School in Germantown in 1994, the Philadelphia school district had 176 functioning school libraries with full-time certified librarians.
Today, there is just one full-time librarian.
“People think of it as an extra,” said Grill, who was a teacher, literacy coach, and librarian in her 34 years with the district.
That mentality is now changing. The school district, along with the advocacy group Philadelphia Alliance to Restore School Librarians (PARSL), applied for and received a nearly $150,000 federal grant to develop a plan for increasing the number of school libraries.
Continue reading here: https://www.chalkbeat.org/philadelphia/2024/08/09/school-libraries-poised-for-comeback-due-to-federal-grant/
