LIS 5100 : Reading promotion project

Santa Rosa Charter School for the Arts serves a K-8 student population in Santa Rosa, California. I work part-time at the school as a Paralibrarian. (Author note: I work in three positions at the school, which, combined, give me full-time hours.)

The problem
Ours is a community that has suffered compounded traumas, beginning with a devastating firestorm in October 2017, in which “About 900 students and staff members lost their homes and everything in them” (Santa Rosa City Schools, n.d.) We are still in the midst of a recovery that was projected to “take years” (ibid), and each year since, the wildland fire season has brought fresh evacuations to parts of our community.

COVID-19 closed our school campuses in March 2020. For the remainder of the school year (2019-2020), and for several months of the following (2020-2021), students were unable to physically set foot on campus. Drive-through distribution of educational materials offered one of the only avenues for returning overdue library books that had been checked out pre-pandemic.

Families navigated the uncertainty and trauma of family members getting sick, or of doing their best to avoid or reduce contagion. During the economic shutdown, many jobs simply disappeared. The news was full of stories of people trying to navigate the unemployment claims system. Who knows what financial turmoil our school families experienced?

When classes resumed visits to the library in 2021-2022, I found that several students had no recollection of books that had been checked out nearly two years earlier. Other students had fines on their account that predated the pandemic, and the nearly two years with no access to our library had reduced any likelihood that those books could be found and returned.

Our school library does not charge overdue fines, but when a book becomes officially “lost” in our library system, a fine is levied against that student’s account.

A recent memo from the district reminded families that “Students are responsible for the proper use and care” of instructional materials that are issued to them, and that a student’s family “shall be liable for any loss, abuse, or damage in excess of that which would result from normal use of the materials” (Santa Rosa City Schools, 2021).

Fines for lost or damaged library books can have a detrimental effect on children’s ability to check out books. Students in Kindergarten through second grade are allowed one book out at a time, while children in grade three and older are allowed two books out at a time. If a student is at their limit with lost or damaged books, the student will not be able to check out any more books from our library until the fines have been cleared.

Some of our teachers set specific assignments based on students checking books out from the school library. For example, the students might be tasked with checking out a biography or choosing a work of fiction that falls within an assigned genre. It would be that much harder for them to complete these assignments if they owed fines for lost or damaged materials.

Since numerous studies and articles highlight the connection between children’s literacy and having access to books (Rasco, n.d.; Scholastic, n.d.), the cost of a child not being able to check out books is potentially far greater than the financial value of one or two lost or damaged titles.

My proposed solution
One of the key points of the recent memo from Santa Rosa City Schools, was that if families are unable to pay the cost of replacing damaged instructional items, that family “must be offered an alternative, such as volunteer hours” (Santa Rosa City Schools, 2021).

My proposal is that students be able to “read-down” library fines for lost or damaged books, as a form of volunteer hours to pay the cost of replacement. I am proposing a rate of $2 for each 15 minutes read, but I am open to adjusting this amount prior to project rollout.

I based my project on two existing practices for reading to pay down fines. LA County Library has a form on its website, through which patrons 21 and younger can report the time that they spend reading down fines (LA County Library, n.d.-a).

Young patrons can clear “all fees accrued on [their cards], except meeting room fees. We will waive fees associated with lost and damaged material replacement fees, Treasurer Tax Collector fees, and library card replacement fees” (LA County Library, n.d.-b).

I also found bookmark templates that were offered by Leigh Collazo (n.d.), a Texas-certified PreK-12 school librarian and secondary English teacher. While her templates were intended to address overdue fines and not lost or damaged items, she acknowledged that librarians could use them at their discretion for students “who, due to financial hardship or family circumstances, [were] unable to pay off their lost or damaged book” (Collazo, 2016).

I created both paper-based and web-based methods of submission to accommodate differing comfort levels with utilization of technology. The paper-based bookmarks were adapted from Collazo’s template, which is offered through Teachers Pay Teachers. The Google form utilizes similar questions to the paper-based bookmark, but in a web-submission format.

The “fine print” for this offer is modeled after language used by Collazo (n.d.) with her bookmarks, which include the following key points:

There should be no limit to this program; students may read as many minutes as they need to clear the fine for lost or damaged items.

The student may read, or be read to, to clear their own fine only. Students may not read to erase the fine of a friend. (That friend could listen to the student read, and that would be an allowable way for the friend to reduce their fine.)

Making use of a condition imposed by LA County Library (n.d.-b), I am stipulating that this offer is available for current fines only. “No reimbursement of past fines or credit toward possible future fines will be provided.”

Extrinsic, versus intrinsic rewards
Small, et al. (2017, p. 8) states that “extrinsically motivated learning environments are those that are formed by external consequences, typically some type of tangible reward system or prize, such as candy or money or even a grade.” This reading program is specifically intended to address an extrinsic goal, that of allowing students to “read-down” fines that prevent or reduce their ability to check books out from our school library.

The “reward” of waived fees is directly related to the time that students spend reading.

I do hope, however, that while students read, they derive intrinsic enjoyment, which Small, et al. define as “the enthusiasm to engage in a task for its own sake out of interest or enjoyment” (ibid). They may also take intrinsic delight in the materials they read, and may also derive satisfaction knowing they are solving a problem for themselves.

Access to books and other reading materials
To read down their fines, students will need access to reading materials. If there is room on a student’s account, they can check a book out from our school library, plus our school district has an arrangement through the public library, in which students can use their school I.D. to access library materials. I regularly encourage students (and their teachers) to make use of the public library.

Students may also find books in their school classrooms, plus I maintain a cart of free books from which students can take books freely. I also have a cart from which teachers can give a book to students.

Students are not limited to books when reading to waive down their fines. When compiling options, I’ve taken my cue from LA County Library, which allows young people to also reduce their fines through reading “graphic novels or comic books, magazines, newspapers, digital databases, articles, or eBooks” (LA County Library, n.d.-b).

Students can also be read to, or listen to an audiobook. I’ve curated a collection of links to eBooks and audio recordings, as well as produced complete read-alouds of books and “First-chapter Friday” previews. All of these might be available to a student, even one who is unable to check books out from our school library.

Timeline
I would like to get this program up and running as soon as is feasible. There are only two or so months left of our current school year, but I encourage our students’ participation in the public library’s Summer Reading Challenge. If the fine-waiver program is in place by then, perhaps students could “read-down” their fines while also tracking the minutes they spend reading for the Summer Reading Challenge. They could then hopefully resume school in the fall with a “clean slate” on their account.

Publicity
Publicity for this project should ideally be discreet. It really shouldn’t be anyone else’s business that a family can’t pay its bills and needs to be offered an alternative arrangement. The child’s reading will need to be verified by an adult, who can either be a teacher or a parent/guardian.

Information literacy
One important aspect of this program is that it supports information literacy. I specifically identified numbers-sense as the type of literacy supported.

California standards for math “call for learning mathematical content in the context of real-world situations, using mathematics to solve problems” (CDE, 2013, v). Students can keep track of the amount to be waived from their fine as they accumulate minutes spent reading.

References
California Department of Education. (2013). California common core state standards: Mathematics. https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/ccssmathstandardaug2013.pdf

Collazo, L. (n.d.) Library management tool — alternative to overdue fines. Teachers pay teachers. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Library-Management-Tool-Alternative-to-Overdue-Fines-1147909

Collazo, L. (2016, November). Reading off library fines. Mrs. Readerpants. https://www.readerpants.net/2016/11/read-off-your-library-fine-printable.html

LA County Library. (n.d.-a) The great read away [Google form]. https://colapl.wufoo.com/forms/zrjjkiy1jddguh/

LA County Library. (n.d.-b) The great readaway! Read at home and reduce your fees. https://lacountylibrary.org/readaway/

Rasco, C. (n.d.) Access to books is critical to ending illiteracy. Education and career news. https://www.educationandcareernews.com/early-childhood-education/access-to-books-is-critical-to-ending-illiteracy/

Santa Rosa City Schools. (n.d.) Fire recovery. https://www.srcschools.org/domain/85

Santa Rosa City Schools. (2021, Oct. 21). Lost/damaged fees for instructional materials and library books…Reminder to families [Memorandum].

Scholastic. (n.d.) Access to books. http://teacher.scholastic.com/education/classroom-library/pdfs/Access-to-Books.pdf

Small, R., Arnone, M. & Bennett, E. (2017). A hook and a book: Rewards as motivators in public library summer reading programs. Children & Libraries, (15)1, 7-15. https://journals.ala.org/index.php/cal/article/view/6236/8123