okay, so i never wanted to throw this out in this forum, but at this very moment i i am wondering why the fuck not. after finishing a far-too-lengthy email to my friend zach, who made the well-intentioned mistake of inquiring about the state of my sad, bookless classroom, i have become fired-up afresh for my cause.
remember a couple months ago when i fretted about the fact that my program had no budget? it was a kind of funny, i'm-sure-this-will-get-worked-out-soon type of freakout. well, it's september now, and the sum that i received after nothing short of hands-and-knees imploration (is that a word?) was $300. total. $300 in terms of books to outfit an elementary school reading room is really just a drop in the bucket. at my old school we had approximately 5,000 titles in our room, so what's that, like maybe $25,000?
reading resource rooms differ from a library in their needs. as someone who deals specifically with children who are reading well below reading level, i have to have a pretty specific type of book - one that covers topic matter appropriate to a child of a certain age while written at a level significantly lower than that age. my 5th graders aren't going to want to pick up barney books even if they are the only ones they can read and understand.
so, on top of the oopsie of getting left off of the planning budget for my new school, VA has now faced a budget freeze. public schools have been told they actually only have 60% of their budgets to actually spend.
i'll let that sink in for a second.
so, we're all pretty screwed. but those of us who are at the back end of the 'budget oversights' that have come in establishing a new school and not anticipating everything that is needed for it to run successfully have approximately zero chance of being at the receiving end of some mystery money that turns up from another department or is use-or-lose by the end of the year. now everyone is scraping and clawing, and my anxious little voice pleading for help to buy books gets avalanched in the shuffle.
i'm trying, let me tell you. i'm writing letters to companies and begging for donations and going to fucking yard sales pawing through dog-eared, 'well-loved' tomes and buying everything i can myself. but it's a little on the ridiculous side to think i can do this without a lot of assistance.
i've been writing grant proposals to anyone who will take them, and an organization i am newly enamored with is donorschoose. i can only throw one proposal up there at a time, but have many ready in hopes that smaller requests will be more easily met than huge, scary, $25,000 ones.
here's a link to the one i have up right now - and as of this moment you can see the 0 of $658 statistic that makes my heart hurt every time i check it. if you know anyone with deep pockets or have a company that needs to make some charitable contributions or even if you can spare $20 to buy some henry and mudge books, will you?
i hate the feeling of asking like this, and i know every couple years i beg for contributions when i do another avon walk, but for all involved, there's really nothing to lose here, and everything to gain.
Is there any way you can get an inter-district loan of books from other schools' reading rooms? Like, can another school loan you 100 books?
a great idea, ray, and in the works as one of my short term solutions. i am lucky enough to have colleagues at my old school who want to help in this way, even if my old principal has made it clear that the books are not supposed to leave her building.