ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline
Volume 10, Number 85
December 12, 2001

In this issue: 
ESEA Conference Report Concludes - $250 million authorized for school libraries! 
Congratulations and Thanks Due to Many

On Tuesday evening, December 11 at five minutes after five, Representative John Boehner (R-OH) gaveled to a close the last conference meeting on the massive Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization.  Included in the final legislation will be an authorization level of $250 million for school library resources.  
This language, which we have referred to as the "Reed amendment" in past ALAWONs is part of the President's Reading First Initiative. 

The conference took place throughout the afternoon, with conferees mentioning the long (3 years) process, the difficult areas of disagreement, the need to pass historic legislation to help all children achieve, bi-partisan gratitude to the President for making education a top priority and to House and Senate staffers who had dedicated thousands of hours of work to the process.  Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) singled out one of the reasons he was in favor of the conference report was that it "helps school libraries."  

Senator Reed and his able staff deserve thanks from the library community for what amounts to almost a career priority-improving school libraries.  In the last reauthorization of ESEA, Senator Reed, then a House member, was able to insert language in the final bill for school libraries, but funding was never achieved for the line item and it was removed in 1996.  Senator Reed and Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) were original co-sponsors of the school library resources bill introduced in the Senate that became the school library resources amendment to S. 1 and is now part of H.R. 1.  Representative Major Owens (D-NY) was the original House sponsor of the legislation and was also a conferee. The sixty nine Senators who voted favorably on the amendment gave considerable support to its inclusion in the final bill.

School library media specialists across the country also deserve thanks for their continuing efforts to improve school libraries for the children who use them.  ALA past-presidents Ann Symons, Sarah Long and Nancy Kranich, and the Executive Boards deserve our thanks for making passage of the school library legislation a presidential and an ALA priority.  AASL Presidents, executive board members and ESEA Task Force members also deserve our heartfelt thanks.  The businesses and publishers in the library community have worked hard to make the legislation happen as well.  Members of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science held a hearing in Ohio this fall on school library resources that uncovered some of the inequities in Ohio school libraries.  Journalists and library journalists in particular have highlighted the out-of-date collections in school libraries, and library researchers like Keith Lance in Colorado and Steve Krashen in California have helped to build the case with strong statistics.  A future ALAWON will detail the language of the report, which should be on-line within a few days. 

A future ALAWON will detail the next steps and the action needed to get funding to match the authorizing level stipulated in the legislation.



       


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ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; e-mail: alawash@alawash.org; Web site: http://www.ala.org/washoff.  Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Camille Bowman, Mary Costabile, Don Essex, Miriam Nisbet and Claudette Tennant. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Jennifer Hendrix, Carrie Russell. ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.