Committee Hearing, November 10, 1999

COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC HEARING BEFORE THE COUNCIL COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION - - - Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Wednesday, 11/10/99 2:25 p.m. - - - RES. 990041 - Authorizing the City Council Committee on Education to hold public hearings on a proposal to require the School District of the City of Philadelphia to educate elementary and secondary school-aged children about the historical event surrounding the Great Irish Famine of 1845 to 1850. RES. 990540 - Calling on the City Council Education Committee to hold hearings to investigate the Board of Education providing library facilities for all students within public schools or provide for access to a planned library program, possibly through shared resources and either the Free Library or one of its branches, or in some other community setting. PRESENT: COUNCILWOMAN DONNA REED MILLER, Chair COUNCILWOMAN JANNIE BLACKWELL COUNCILMAN DAVID COHEN COUNCILMAN JAMES F. KENNEY COUNCILMAN RICHARD T. MARIANO COUNCILWOMAN DONNA REED MILLER COUNCILMAN ANGEL ORTIZ COUNCILMAN FRANK DICICCO - - - VINCENT VARALLO ASSOCIATES, INC. Registered Professional Reporters Eleven Penn Center, Suite 600 Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 561-2220 2 I N D E X Page Res. 990041 James Mullen, President . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Irish Famine Curriculum Committee. 6 Bob Hurst, Member . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Mayo Association of Philadelphia 7 Jack Worrall, Chairman. . . . . . . . . . . . 18 8 Economics Department at Rutgers University 9 Tom Slattery, CCC Celt. . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Dan McGinley, Philadelphia Irish Society. . . 23 Tom Meehan, Philadelphia Firefighter. . . . . 26 12 Tom Conaghan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Federation Irish-American Societies Bob Gessler, County Board President . . . . . 31 Philadelphia Ancient Hibernians. Superintendent David Hornbeck . . . . . . . . 35 Res. 990541 Floyd Alston, Former School Board President 38 Superintendent David Hornbeck . . . . . . . . 45 Tom Gill, Professor, West Chester University 55 Dr. Marciene Mattleman. . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Executive Director, Philadelphia Reads Shelly Yanoff, PCCY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Students, World Communications Charter School 95 Elliot Shelkrot, Director, Free Library . . . 105 Mary Jane Zimmerman . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Association, Philadelphia School Librarians 3 (Index, cont'd.) Debra Gniewek, Activity Manager . . . . . . . 127 Library Programs Services, School District William Epstein, Director, Gov't. Relations 139 Carol Heinsdorf, Assoc., School Librarians 145 Karen Talarico Executive Director . . . . . . 149 Friends of the Free Library Frances Aulston, Director, West Philadelphia 153 Cultural Alliance and the Paul Robeson House Janet Dubinsky, President . . . . . . . . . . 159 Garden Court Community Association Dee Phillips, Vice President. . . . . . . . . 167 Philadelphia Federation of Teachers Francinia Emery, Director . . . . . . . . . . 172 Multicultural Resource Center Mr. Parker, for State Rep. Jas. Roebuck . . . 176 Elsie Hart, Public Librarian. . . . . . . . . 180 Lauren Douthit, Universal Institute . . . . . 186 Gail Bush, Chief Operating Administrator. . . 190 Alliance for Progress Charter School Lilian Brown, Retired School Librarian. . . . 197 Gerry Weisman, Volunteer. . . . . . . . . . . 201 John F. McCloskey School Maurice Okereke, Librarian, Mitchell School 206 4 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 P R O C E E D I N G S

Good afternoon. The Committee on Public Education is now called to order. For the record those in attendance are: I am Councilwoman Donna Reed-Miller, Chair of this committee; to my left, Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell; to my right, Councilman Jim Kenney and Councilman Frank DiCicco. Will the clerk please read the resolution.

Resolution No. 990041, authorizing the City Council Committee on Education to hold public hearings on a proposal to require the School District of the City of Philadelphia to educate elementary and secondary school-aged children about the historical event surrounding the Great Irish Famine of 1845 to 1850.

Thank you. There are two bills to be heard in this committee today, and we're going to deal with the library bill 24 after this bill. Councilman Kenney, you have an opening 5 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 statement?

Thank you, Madam Chairperson, and thank you all for your attendance today. This resolution was introduced on January 26th of 1999 in an effort to bring attention to the issue of a curriculum change that's being requested within the School District of Philadelphia as it relates to the events that unfolded in the 1840s in the nation of Ireland, which resulted in a major migration of Irish people into various countries of the world -- the most, probably, in the United States of America. It's my belief that because we live in a polyglot society that we live in, that it is important for children of all ages, of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, to have an understanding, and a shared understanding, of each other's common experience. And whether it's treatment and study of the issues of slavery, issues of the Holocaust, issues of other catastrophes that have happened throughout this world's history, I believe in the end, our children all have the ability to understand each other's share of experiences and 6 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 tragedies, similarly as we do to understand each other's heroes. One example that I give, in many places where I've been is that through the course of my educational experience, I never heard the name Octavius D. Cato. Octavius D. Cato was probably one of the most famous Americans and Philadelphians in the history of this country, responsible for the desegregation of the trolley system in Philadelphia and for the voting rights acts of those times, urging people, black Americans, to register and vote, and was assassinated at Seventh and South, on the street, for his work. And the reason that I raise that issue is because I was never taught about him. If. I and my children and other children who look like me and come from the background that I come would have an opportunity from to learn about people like Octavius Cato, people like Richard Allen, and others that we really don't hear much about, we would have the ability not only to share each other's heroes and study issues like the Holocaust and slavery and the Great 7 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 Hunger of Ireland, it would give us the ability to share each other's tragedies as well and, I think, bring our society much closer together and give our children a much better understanding of our common experiences and of our common American citizenship. With that said, I want to make two requests of the Chair. First of all, we have very good news to report. People who have been advocating this curriculum in our public school system, both in the city and statewide, have reported to me a tremendous amount of cooperation and help from the School District of Philadelphia, including Superintendent Hornbeck, his staff, and Mr. Epstein. I'd like to thank them for that. The purpose of the hearing today is for the individuals involved in promoting this to come forward and talk basically about the cooperation and progress that has been made in this regard. It's not been contentious; it's been very helpful and cooperative. And, secondly, I would like to make a request to the Chair, and I will consult with the Chief Clerk on how we do this, but in the 8 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 resolution, which says, "Authorizing City Council's Committee on Education to hold public hearings on a proposal to require the School District of Philadelphia to educate elementary and secondary school-aged children about the historical events surrounding the Great Irish Famine of 1845 to 1850," we're going to make a request Madam Chair, that we change the word "require" to "request," and I will deal with the Chief Clerk's Office to attempt to change that so that we have an understanding that this Council doesn't have the ability to require anything but to request and have received cooperation from the School District in this regard. So I will make those arrangements and inform the Chair of the results of that.

And I do thank the Chair for her acquiescence in allowing us to bring up three panels of people who will talk about the efforts that have been ongoing since January of 1999.

Okay. Thank you, Councilman Kenney. And I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank you as chief sponsor of this 9 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 resolution for introducing and calling for this hearing. Our ability to be tolerant of one another's differences is always fueled when we are not afforded at an early age the opportunity to be exposed to other ethnic group besides our own history. It is our differences that allow us the ability to bring so many variables and such richness to our society. Are there any -- is there anyone here to testify on this bill? I do have some names. James Mullin, President of Irish Famine Curriculum Committee; Robert Hurst, from the Mayo Society. Will you please come up and have seat at the table. Jack Worrall, past president of the Federation of American Societies of the Delaware Valley. (Above-named individuals come forward.)

And when you testify, please state your name, spell your name for the record, and proceed with your testimony. And you can go in whatever order you want.

Thank you, Madam Chairman. My name is James Mullen. I am President of the 10 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 Irish Famine Curriculum Committee. I'm also a member of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education. It was my pleasure to meet with representatives of the School District of Philadelphia: Dr. Balsley, Mr. Epstein, and Mr. Garrison. And we had a very productive meeting with them. They drafted a letter, which I have in my hand, and we're going to make some very positive steps toward acquainting the students in Philadelphia with the truth of what happened in the Irish Famine. One of the reasons why the 150th anniversary of the Irish Famine is so important is because it brought out an increased amount of research into what really happened during the Irish Famine. I was brought up thinking that the Irish starved because they could only think of one crop to grow, and when that crop was blighted, they died for lack of imagination. The facts behind the Famine are much more complicated, and they can only be understood within the context of British colonial rule in Ireland. I'm going to be very brief, but I think 11 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. " And I think when we go about studying the Irish Famine, we have to look at the causes for the Famine. And the causes did not begin with potato blight; they began with the impoverishment of the Irish. The Irish were impoverished over hundreds of year. Their trade was repressed by the English because it conflicted with the English trade with the Continent. By the time English laws were through in the 15th century, all Irish goods had to be transported on English ships, go through English ports, pay English duties. And at the end, Irish trade in wool, linen, beef, pork mutton, butter, cheese, fish, and glass were all destroyed. And that's one step towards the impoverishment of the Irish. The next step was to seize the fertile land in an agricultural country and drive the Irish to the infertile land. This was done under 12 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 Cromwell. At the same time, the Irish land owners were forbidden to be east of the River Shannon after 1654, and they faced the death penalty or slavery in the West Indies. It's been pointed out that, in a book called, To Hell or Connaught, which tells the story of Cromwell in Ireland, that Oliver Cromwell's son, Henry, rounded up a thousand "Irish wenches," he called them, and shipped them off to Barbados. B. DuBois. " The condition that the Irish were in after their land was taken from them is described by Jonathon Swift. " Swift said, "Increasing rent is squeezed out of the very blood and vitals 13 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 and clothes and dwellings of the tenants who live worse than English beggars. " The next thing that helped impoverish the Irish, after losing their land and their livelihood, was to have 140 years of penal laws imposed upon them. Under these laws, the Irish were forbidden to vote, enter a profession, hold public office, practice their religion, engage in trade or commerce, purchase land, lease land, or inherit land from a Protestant. No Irish-Catholic could be the guardian to a child, educate a child, or send a child abroad to receive an education. That will impoverish you too, 140 years of laws like that. The last one of those penal laws I wanted to point out was, the British forbade the practice of primogenitor so that the Irish could not leave their land to eldest son; it had to be divided among all the children so that over a very 14 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 few generations, the Irish were living on smaller and smaller plots of land. I know this is a long story and it's something that we're going to be working on with the School District to make sure that it's taught, but I have to go on to one other topic, which is the amount of food that was exported during the Irish Famine.

This is something that I never learned about going to Irish schools, but recent research has shown that this is in fact what happened. Free-market laissez-faire economics led the British to export an abundance of food from Ireland, while the Irish starved. In 1845, a Famine year, over million 16 bushels of grain were shipped out of Ireland. 17 Between 1846 and 1850, 3 million live animals were 18 exported, along with an increasing supply of bacon 19 and ham. During Black '47, when 400,000 Irish 20 people died of starvation, almost 4,000 vessels 21 carrying food left Ireland for ports in Bristol, 22 Glassgow, Liverpool, and London. In just 9 months 23 of that same year, 1,336,000 gallons of 24 gain-derived alcohol were exported from Ireland, 25 along with 822,000 gallons of butter. 15 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 Now, what kind of a famine is it when you have that kind of commodities leaving a country while people starved to death. It's a lack of entitlement, that's what the Irish starved to death of; they weren't entitled to food. I really appreciate the Council taking up this resolution. I'm sure it will have a tremendous impact on what our children learn. And I'm grateful to the City of Philadelphia. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mullen. Are there any questions of this witness? (No questions.)

Okay. Then we'll have Mr. Hurst, Robert Hurst, next.

Thank you. My name is Bob Hurst. I'm a member of the Mayo Association of Philadelphia. And I want to thank Councilman Kenney for the opportunity to speak here today and for the words he spoke a little earlier. Certainly, it says everything that we're here 16 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 today about. I also want to thank Bob Kessler for the opportunity to speak here. I am here speaking on behalf of the City Council's Committee on Education for Resolution 990041. And I would request that the School District be able to educate the elementary and secondary school-aged children about the events of the Great Irish Famine. Between 1845 and 1850, the potato plight destroyed the potato crop which was the main staple and basic nourishment of the people of Ireland. During this great hunger, over one million people -- half of them children -- died of starvation as a direct result of the potato plight. The real tragedy is that the so-called Irish Potato Famine should never have occurred. While a million people starved to death and another million were forced to emigrate, food was being forcibly exported from Ireland to Britain, enough food to feed the entire nation several times over. This period represented the bleakest days of Irish history. The British government, which failed miserably, later divested itself of 17 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 the responsibility and instead forced the accountability on the landlords. The landlords evicted over a half a million people from their homes, resulting in countless deaths caused by exposure, disease, and starvation. The continuation of the potato plight led to the mass immigration of more than one million people to the United States. Thousands upon thousands set sail in coffin ships and never arrived at their destination. Those immigrants and the survivors of one of the most catastrophic events in world history made, and continue to make, lasting contributions to the culture and history of America. Each generation of school children in the United States should be educated about the Great Hunger in Ireland so they may develop an understanding of this important historical event and know the true story of this historic human drama of millions of Irish immigrants who found here, in the United States of America, the freedom, liberty, and prosperity denied to their ancestors in Ireland. Thank you. 18 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041

Thank you. Councilman Kenney?

Thank you very much, Mr. Hurst and Mr. Mullen for your presentations, and Mr. Worrall, for being here. What I would like to do if possible for the remainder of this panel and the next two panels is that, since we have a general overview of the history of what happened -- certainly not as extensive as what we would like these children to have through their education -- what I would like to do is kind of attack the reasons or speak to the reasons why it's important that we work with the School District to ensure that this curriculum moves forward.

Okay, thank you. Mr. Worrall.

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you, members of the Council. My name is John D. Worrall; people call me "Jack." And Worrall is W-O-R-R-A-L-L. I am the Chairman of the Economics Department at Rutgers University, and I'm a graduate professor of economics and industrial and labor relations at 19 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 that university. I am here today -- and I am a professor, because when I was a child and I was hungry, the people of Philadelphia did not turn their backs on me. They took me to the children's shelter, and the working people of this city fed and clothed me. And then I went to St. John's Orphanage. And my brothers and sisters, through their charity, fed me. And over the course of my life at St. John's Orphanage and St. Thomas Moore and in the regular army, I learned a lot about racism, and I saw it in all walks of life and it was palpable. And when I became a professor, I was determined that I would speak out about it when I taught labor economics and I saw people discriminated against in housing and in education and in the labor market. And I taught the Great Famine at Rutgers University in the Intellectual Heritage Series. And the reason that I taught it was because I wanted people of all colors and all religions to understand the virulence and the evil of racism. And some people who practice it, when 20 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 they realize that genocide has been practiced against their own people, are not so quick to practice it against their brothers and sisters. And I would like to thank the City Council publicly, all its members, Congressman (sic) Kenney for speaking out about racism. And I would like to thank publicly the School Board for trying to do the same in the schools of Philadelphia. I would like to thank the School Board for helping us to educate children about racism. And when people learn that at this time in Ireland, 35 percent of the combined population of the, quote/unquote, United Kingdom was starving to death, that country paid 1 half of 1 percent of GNP to feed and to clothe them, and when they see people in America born in need, who need education, who need housing, who need to be treated with dignity and respect that all of our brothers and sisters deserve, that they won't visit that same kind of evil on their fellow citizens. Thank you very much.

Thank you. 21 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 (Applause.)

Does any member of the committee have any questions for any of these three witnesses? (No questions.)

Okay, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to come here today. The next group is Tom Slatterly, Tom Meehan, and Dan McGinley. And because we have another hearing, we want to limit the presentations to maybe two minutes, three minutes, because we have a lot of other people to testify in the next hearing. I also want to recognize for the record that Councilman David Cohen and Councilman Ortiz and Councilman Mariano are now here at the table. Thank you.

May I say, Madam Chair, before they begin, let me tell everyone here for the libraries that we will begin very shortly. I would have told you a little later but I wasn't aware that we had another bill 25 and we're glad certainly to have this testimony. 22 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 But if you'll give us just a few minutes, we will give you a chance to make your presentation, and we thank you also for coming.

Good afternoon. Please state your name and speak directly into the mike.

My name is Tom Slattery, S-L-A-T-T-E-R-Y. I'm a Philadelphian who now happens to be in Bucks County. In 1994, as we got to the beginning of the 150th anniversary of the Great Famine, I was appalled at the lack of knowledge of the event, which Mr. Mullen and Mr. Hurst have appropriately told you, and also at all ethnic stereotyping, and determined that what we need to do is get information into the hands of the general public. With the help of experts, we've put together a Famine Education set, which we wanted to place into the libraries. This is fine for educating the adult community, but what is needed is an appropriate curriculum -- which Mr. Mullen has put together -- and some direction for people like City Council to get this information into the hands of young people so that young people can 23 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 understand that all of us have gone through good times and tough times. So far, we have been able to place 59 of these Famine Education sets, a copy of which is up there on your desk. Now with the generosity of Bob Gessler and C.C.C. Kelp, we would like to give set no. 60 to City Council, and that set will remain here. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. I'm Dan McGinley, and I'm speaking for Jan Morris, the President of the Philadelphia Irish Society. And I want to thank the Councilwoman Miller and the members of the Education Committee for having this opportunity. I certainly won't read the whole text that I have here, but I've submitted it so you'll have it for the record. But I would say that there are great lessons to be learned from teaching about the Irish Famine, and it doesn't just concern the Irish. It really is one of the worst human disasters of the 19th century. And the Irish, who really make up one of the largest ethnic groups in this area, have learned a great 24 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 deal from that experience. And, of course, as an old history teacher, we're supposed to learn about history so we don't have to repeat it. And we would hope that we could certainly do that and teach our children that way too. I, too, grew up in the home of two Irish immigrants, people who had worked hard just to get to this country. And there were three things which characterized them. One was, they were very thankful to be here, so they were very, very happy about the benefits of our society and never missed an opportunity to vote. Two, they valued education highly because in their own country, they had been only able to get a 6th-grade education. And, three, they were without prejudice, because they had realized what it was to be a second-class citizen in their own country. So that those, types of lessons, I learned at home. Now, I am also a qualified social studies teacher. And in my own studies, I didn't learn about the Irish Famine and -- nor was I able to teach it to students. What I've learned about the Irish Famine, I learned from outside of the 25 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 regular curriculum, even though I studied American history, European history, that seemed to be pretty much of an oversight. And I would just like to close with the words of Tony Blair, who apologized for his government's role in the famine. And he stated, "Those who governed in London at that time failed the people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy. We must not forget such a dreadful event." Now, our metropolitan area is second only to Boston in the percentage of families of Irish ancestry. And according to the 1990 census, there were 268,179 Irish in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Irish Society believes that the Irish history should be taught in our schools, not because we have so many citizens of Irish ancestry, but because it contains so many examples of a great human tragedy. It also provides a very concrete example of what can occur, especially when those who have the responsibility to act fail to do so. Thank you.

Thank you. 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041

Madam Chairperson. My name's Tom Meehan. I'm a Philadelphia firefighter and have been for years. I'm the past 5 president of the Division 22 of the Ancient 6 Hibernians, named after the firefighter John J. 7 Revin (ph.), who was killed, ironically, fighting 8 a church fire in a Baptist church in 1994. John 9 was a staunch Catholic, a great firefighter, but 10 he had a knowledge of Irish history, which he 11 taught me. Every day, we used to sit there in the 12 firehouse and talk about what wasn't taught in the 13 school system. We have children who went through 14 the Philadelphia school systems. 15 My division had taken it upon itself, 16 through Mr. Slatterly's help, to distribute Irish 17 Famine sets to Philadelphia schools. And on two 18 dates since 1997, we presented four high school 19 sets and six grade school sets of the Famine 20 curriculum books to the Philadelphia schools: 21 North Catholic and St. Basil's Academy, Roman and 22 Hallahan on the high school side, Our Lady of 23 Mount Carmel in South Philadelphia, St. Cecilia's 24 in Fox Chase, St. Matthew's in Mayfair, St. Peter 25 the Apostle at Fifth and Girard, St. Martin de 27 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 Porres at 24th and Lehigh, and St. John's in Manayunk. And we're in the process of distributing more volumes this year to other schools. The members of my division have taken it upon themselves to have Irish history taught in schools and in their parishes that they belong to. And we feel this is a way to urge Council to take this upon them and the School District to have something thought that we weren't taught when we came through the City schools. One line or two lines in a history book that says, There was a potato famine, and the Irish died, or the Irish emigrated to other countries -- what happened to the four million people who used to be on the Irish census in the early 1840s and were no longer there in 1850? History says that 1.5 million people emigrated to other countries, but those other people died, and they don't show up in anybody else's rolls. And we would like this taught for -- I mean, this is -- it was a case basically of the original ethnic cleansing, and we would like this taught in schools. 28 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Are there any questions from this committee? Councilman Kenney?

Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Meehan. I appreciate your sentiments. And as you know, John was a friend of mine from childhood. And I never let it go by when someone mentions John that on that same dreadful day, we lost firefighter Vince Acey (ph.), who was an African-American firefighter, who fought side by side with John at that same Rising Sun Baptist church and they died heroically together, which, I think, is a good message of what's coming out of this hearing today. Thank you.

If I may add, those two gentlemen died protecting the retreat of their brother firefighters as the situation became untenable.

Thank you.

Thank you for the 29 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 opportunity.

Thank you. Next we have we have Bob Gessler and Tom Conaghan. (Messrs. Gessler and Conaghan come forward.)

Thank you. You can proceed, whomever.

Tom can go first.

I'd like to thank Councilman Kenney and Madam Chairwoman, Councilmembers, Mr. Gessler here for inviting me to give some testimony today. The federation -- I represent the Federation of Irish-American Societies, which is an umbrella for the Irish societies and organizations in the Delaware Valley. We're located in Philadelphia. The federation of Irish-American Societies of the Delaware Valley supports the teaching of the Irish Famine curriculum in Philadelphia's public schools. Ireland starved because its food, from 30 to 50 shiploads per day, was removed under 30 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 armed guard by 12,000 British constables reinforced by 200,000 British soldiers. Records are available to prove official British intents by its actions and enactments in Parliament. Ship manifests are available, which show clearly that thousands upon thousands of tons of food were removed from Ireland during the worst years of Famine. Eyewitness accounts are available. Just one example. The mother of Oscar Wilde wrote a poem in 1847 called "The Famine Year," telling about soldiers removing food from the (unintelligible) families and stately ships taking that food away to England. The designation in the period of Irish history between 1845 and 1850 as "the Great Famine" has disturbed scholars for years. A (unintelligible) implication that there was no 20 food. British records indicate the exact opposite. Irish-American children deserve to know their own history. Many will be shocked by it. However, the suffering endured by their ancestors, their courage, their struggles and accomplishments 31 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 in the new land, their story must be told. Irish-American children epitomize the courage and hopes manifested by the millions of Irish who were compelled to leave their beloved Ireland in search of freedom and opportunity in America. The (unintelligible) contribution of Irish immigrants was indispensable in making these United States the greatest power and the most benevolent nation in recorded history. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Are there any questions of this witness from anybody on the committee? (No questions.)

Okay, thank you.

My name is Bob Gessler, County Board President of the Philadelphia Ancient Hibernians. I would like to thank Chairperson Miller, Councilman Ken, Mariano, and all of the Councilpeople that are here today for considering this resolution. The purpose of this resolution is, as people can hear is, just to teach the true story of what happened during that awful time in Irish 32 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 history. And for the reason, we feel that if people understand the suffering of others and also what happened, you know, after they arrived in America, the treatment they got here, you know, the racism, the bigotry, so maybe that people will understand a little bit better that all the races have experienced these types of things, and maybe make each other a little bit more tolerant in the future. I would like to commend the School District of Philadelphia. Right from the beginning, they've been very cooperative with us on this resolution, and they've gone above and beyond what we expected them to. And we feel that they might be a model of other school districts throughout the state of Pennsylvania. I would also ask that the statements by Mayor Rendell and Mayor-elect John Street be read into the record. This is an issue not only dealing with the Irish community, but I think that education on this and learning really speaks to all of the people of Philadelphia. I'd like to also thank all of the 33 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 members much of the Irish community that made it out here today. We have representatives of a majority of the Irish groups in the City of Philadelphia -- the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, the Federation, and all the other groups that spoke up here today. So we would ask that Council would look upon this resolution favorably and also would take the time and read the materials that we've provided to them. There's many other events around this unfortunate period in Irish history, including the construction of an Irish memorial at Front and Chestnut, and to visit the Jeannie Johnston, which is the recreation of an Irish Famine ship that will be down at Penn's Landing from June 1st through the year 2000. So once again, I'd like to thank Councilman Kenney and his staff for proposing this resolution and also Councilman Miller for holding this hearing. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Does any members of the committee have 34 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 any questions or comments for these two witnesses? (No questions.)

All right, thank you. We really appreciate your coming here to testify today. Councilman Kenney?

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. For the record, I'm going to submit, through the Chair, to the stenographer two pieces of correspondence -- one from the current mayor, Edward G. Rendell, supporting this effort, and the second is from the future mayor of Philadelphia John F. Street, also supporting and commending the efforts of this committee and of the Council and of the School District in attempting to bring this about. And I will submit this to the Chair today. Thank you.

Thank you. The last and final witness for this committee hearing is Superintendent Hornbeck. (Superintendent David Hornbeck comes forward.)

Thank you. 35 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 SUPT. HORNBECK: Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman and members of the committee. Let me simply say, with reference to this first bill that is in front of Council, that it has been our pleasure at the School District to work with the individuals who are focussing the attention of all of us on the issues arising out of the Great Famine of the 1840s and 1850s in Ireland. We look forward to that continuing partnership. My own hope is that it won't be over after we've had this first round of conversation. I think that the resource that is represented by the individuals that have appeared before you today is really quite extraordinary. I appreciate particularly Councilman Kenney's comments as we began this conversation. I do think that we learn immensely from each other as we celebrate the diversity among us, and I at least keep hoping that as we learn, we don't repeat these mistakes from one generation to the next. I am struck, maybe as even a part of the transition, by the observation that between these bills that will be considered this 36 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990041 afternoon, we are about to move from an examination of the Potato Famine of the 1840s and 1850s to the literacy famine that exists in Philadelphia and in Pennsylvania and in most poor communities across this state and this nation -- not of the 1840s and of the 1850s but of 1999. And it is one of those lessons. I was struck by one of the individuals who testified who noted, asking the sort of rhetorical question of why did the Irish starve? and then answered it by saying that they starved because they were not entitled to have food. We find ourselves, in my judgment, in 1999 in Philadelphia and in rural and in urban Pennsylvania in a situation in which the poor children of this state are not entitled to have reading materials in the libraries and aren't entitled to have prekindergarten programs and summer school. And it is partially that lesson that as we teach about the 1840s and 1850s that we fast-forward to 1999 and learn our lessons. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you Superintendent Hornbeck. 37 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 There are no other witnesses to testify for this bill, and we're going to move right on to the next bill. Superintendent Hornbeck, will you come back to the table. Floyd Alston, Andrew Farnese, Debra Gniewek, Tom Gill, Dr. Marciene Mattleman, and Shelly Yanoff. The clerk will now read the title of the bill.

Resolution No. 990540, a resolution calling on the City Council Education Committee to hold hearings to investigate the Board of Education providing library facilities for all students within public schools or provide for access to a planned library program, possibly through shared resources and either the Free Library or one of its branches, or in some other community setting.

Okay, thank you. Councilwoman Blackwell?

Thank you. Thank you for your patience, everyone. Let me say that this legislation was initially introduced in City Council on March 17, 1994, and 38 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 then again on January 26, 1999. We are overjoyed to finally have the opportunity to discuss and explore the issue of having a library program for all public school children. I'm very encouraged by the excellent information that I have received by many of you here and also from those who are near and far. We now know which schools have a library program as well as which do not. I was surprised to learn that out of 180 elementary schools, 110 do not have a library program, but I was pleased to learn also, however, that across the board, all the testimony indicates that library programs affect the learning, grades, and performance, and make a difference in the lives of our children if made a specific part of their curriculum. With that, we're happy to have you here today. I know that we are in a time crunch and that some of you in this first panel have a meeting with the Mayor. So, again, we apologize for the delay and encourage you to begin your testimony. Thank you.

Good afternoon 39 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Councilwoman Miller and Councilwoman Blackwell.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

It is a pleasure to be here this morning on such an important issue, and I will give brief but sincere comments before some of the other persons before you will present. It's a pleasure to be here to have a dialogue with City Council about the library programs and facilities in the School District of Philadelphia. Superintendent Hornbeck will provide you with a detailed report of where we are on this issue. However, I want to make it clear the Board's firm commitment to quality school libraries for the children which our district serves. I believe that among some quarters, there have been the misconception that the School District administration doesn't believe that libraries and librarians are important. That is not true. We know that librarians and library assistants are important players on the school team, and that they provide critical support to 40 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 what teachers are doing in the classrooms. That is why we have asked that libraries and instructional technology be discussed and addressed at the highest level of the School District. For the past several years, we've had an ongoing dialogue with the Association of Philadelphia School Librarians who have eloquently and passionately advocated on behalf of children's access to books and libraries. I have spoken at their annual citywide dinner and met informally with librarians as I visited schools all over the city. I know that librarians are dedicated men and women who are doing a first-class job with young people in our schools. I have repeatedly assured those who support libraries that we understand the importance of an adequately resourced and appropriately staffed library in every school in this city. Yet, I know that it will take all of us working together -- parents, teachers, and other school staff administrators, School Board, members and business community, and the business community and elected officials -- for that 41 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 reality to be the rule, not the exception in Philadelphia. In a perfect world where adequate resources aren't an issue, every child would have a school library, with hundreds of new and current books, a certified librarian, and a library assistant. A library is a place where wonderful things are possible, where imagination and creativity are nurtured, and where magic can be made. It's where the lifelong love of books, information, and learning begin. Among the tables and chairs, the card catalogs and stacks of books, a library is a room that holds ideas, knowledge, and information. And let me say parenthetically, on one of my visits to a library during the term last year, I happened to be in one of our power libraries, and a youngster came in the library while I was there and he wasn't paying much continuing to me, so he certainly wasn't doing it for my benefit. And he walked into the room and the first thing he did was take his shoes off and grab a book and curled up on the couch, which is 42 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 the kind of thing that, you know, you can't replace that, or you can't substitute that kind of informal exposure to books. And I will never forget that scene. Inside libraries, ideas can travel through hundreds of years, across cultures, and around the world from one mind to another. Libraries have evolved into the multimedia centers, with loads of information at our fingertips -- through video and audiotapes, CD ROMs, films, and, of course, through computer access through the Internet. The District has tried to keep up to date with managing all of this information by putting more computers in library networks across the state and across the country, sharing resources and teaching tools. I believe it is clear that this district has demonstrated its understanding of the value of libraries. We have supported many innovations, including the introduction of the outstanding Library Power Program in many of our schools.

At the same time, some hard realties intrude upon this situation. When a principal, 43 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 his or her staff, and the School Council sit down to discuss the needs of the school and resources available to them, they often have to make tough decisions, agonizing choices. They have to choose, for instance, between an additional classroom teacher or a librarian because of inadequate funding -- a point we've come back to many, many times before. We've often had to rob Peter to pay Paul. Is it the best solution? I don't think so, and no one will argue that. But it is the most practical one, in some instances. Still, most school administrators have tried to find ways to make research and instructional materials available to students for at least some of the time. Some schools have redeployed their internal staff so that libraries are available to our children, even though they may not have a full-time librarian. Or some schools have a librarian on duty only a few days a week. These times have called for creative thinking and ideas about how to configure school budgets so that the students get at least some of the benefits from a library program. 44 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Any parent who has had to balance a family budget knows how heartwrenching these types of choices can be. Libraries, like many other parts of the District programs, have sustained painful cuts. None of us have operated under the illusion that these cuts haven't hurt our school programs, our teachers, our classrooms, or our children. That is why we drew a line in the sand and refused to make any more instructional-based reductions, which can have such devastating effects on our children. We know that libraries and librarians support teaching and learning. They contribute greatly to improving literacy, which is essential to success in life. Give a child a love of reading early on, and you will have given him or her the tools to open up their world. We look forward to continue to go talk with City Council and other elected officials and the broader community about how we can work together to make libraries an integral part of the educational experience for students in our schools. I am convinced that between us, we have the passion for the needs for children and the 45 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 commitment to doing things that will give them every tool possible to help them succeed in school and succeed in life. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Alston. Mr. Hornbeck, Superintendent Hornbeck? SUPT. HORNBECK: Madam Chair, members of the committee, I thank you for the opportunity to appear this afternoon before this committee to discuss the importance of school libraries. As a strong advocate of quality school library programs, I was gratified to learn of the interests that you and your colleagues have demonstrated in our school library programs. Your interest comes at a timely juncture, as the current information explosion makes the library program one of the critical elements in building lifelong learning in our students. I'm hopeful that heightened community interest in this issue will make it possible to identify the increased resources necessary to put this support, as well as others that are equally critical, to continue our dramatic growth in 46 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 achievement in place in all of our schools. In the course of the past several weeks, the local and national media have made a compelling case for the public school libraries in Philadelphia, demonstrating both the depth of the need and the power of a strong library program. Once again, the stories have indicated the wide gap that exists between the libraries available to students in this city and those available to children attending suburban schools. Given the clear need for improved library programs and the current interest in them, the traditional response from me as an urban superintendent might be to instruct my central staff and staff in our schools that libraries would immediately become our highest priority item, to call for every school to have a librarian by next fall, to ask you to dedicate part of the City surplus toward this issue, and to pledge to direct every new funding source that could possibly be used for library expansion toward that goal. So why -- if I believe that excellent libraries are a necessary part of making every 47 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 child proficient, which I do; and if I have local data that confirms the national data suggesting that a good library programs pays off in increased test scores, which I have; and if I understand that the District needs to be seen as proactive on this issue, which I do -- why don't I take the approach that I just outlined? I don't take it because that approach misses the point. Such an increase would come at the expense of directing principals to shift resources away from other programs that, based on strong data, we know to be as crucial as good libraries to the development of high achievement and lifelong learning skills by our children. To direct school staff and communities to shift their meager resources away from other effective programs and into libraries would be to embark again on one of those cannibalistic exercises in which our principals, teachers, and parents are forced to make choices that no responsible adults in a just and fair society should in fact be making; that is, choices between kindergarten and libraries, choices between classroom libraries and school libraries, choices between smaller classes 48 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 and school libraries, and choices between graphing calculators for high school students and school libraries. You know and I know that the principals, teachers, and parents in schools in the suburbs are never asked to make those kinds of choices. Let me illustrate this more specifically by pointing to the coverage by a representative of the national television media at the Peirce Elementary School. Peirce is located in North Philadelphia, 23rd and Cambria Streets, and has a poverty rate of 90 percent.

For the past six years, Principal Shively Willingham has worked tirelessly with his staff and community to make the best possible uses of the resources that are available to him -- not only through the District's operating budget, which is funded by the State and the City, but by careful and creative use of federal dollars that come to Peirce through Title I and other federal grants. With these funds Mr. Willingham and his staff have put into place full-day kindergarten, reduced class size in grades K and 1, an extended year 49 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 program, a tutorial program with the Allegheny West Foundation, and a balanced literacy program, including the 100 Book Challenge, and Steps to Great Books. Each of these is a practice that, evidence tells us, increases student achievement. Last year, Mr. Willingham and his staff squeezed out enough funds to spend $2300 per classroom on books to create in-class libraries so the students could be guaranteed a wide variety of materials right at hand every day, which research has shown to increase student achievement. Have they made progress? I'm proud to say that Peirce is one of 164 schools in the School District of Philadelphia that is on target to making its 12-year goal of having 95 percent of all of its students scoring at the proficient level on the SAT-9, which will put those students significantly ahead of grade level and ahead of the national average. But when the national media came to do a story on Peirce's library, they didn't report any of this story, which Mr. Willingham had proudly recounted as he walked them through the school. They focussed only on the story line that 50 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 brought them here, noting the impoverished state of Peirce's library. Mr. Willingham and the cluster leader and I couldn't agree more that the Peirce library is an embarrassment to all of us in this city. Indeed, that's why Mr. Willingham made the decision to close it. But it is only one example of the inequities constantly visited on the children of Peirce School by the choices that the State and federal officials of this land make every day in the funding levels and formulas that they design. I have been amazed at what seems to be a growing impression that our school principals do not value libraries, or that the District is somehow negligent in how we support them. In the past five years, there's been a 50 percent increase in the District resources spent on library materials. Do we want better school libraries? Of course, we do. No one wants a school library in which children are reading outdated at best or racist and sexist books at worst that can be harmful to children. No one wants libraries that are dingy, dilapidated, and uninviting. It is, in 51 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 fact, for reasons like these that some principals, like Mr. Willingham, have actually closed their substandard libraries and redirected the resources and the energy it took to support them to other uses. Like our principal at Peirce, they have built classroom collections that engage children and provide stimulating reading materials to youngsters who have few or no books available to them at home. Partners such as Marciene Mattleman, who also will testify at this hearing, have been tremendously helpful in raising funds for hundreds of 100 Books Challenge classroom collections. Our principals have forged links with local public libraries. I'm pleased you will hear from Elliot Shelkrot shortly, because I know that the Free Library has been, and will continue to be, an aggressive partner in enriching the learning environment for all of our children. Is this enough? Of course not. But not because we don't value libraries. One thing that has surprised me over the past several weeks that even our local press, 52 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES.

990540 which has consistently kept the public informed about the more than $1900 per child per year gap between the resources made available to our students and those available to students in the surrounding 61 school districts, reported on this issue in isolation rather than connecting this story to its source -- the federal and state funding formulas. For example, on the list in the Inquirer of ways that interested people in the community could help our libraries -- which was a grate list and which we deeply appreciate -- where was the eloquent plea to citizens to write to Harrisburg for fair funding for our schools? Madam Chair, I suggest that we cannot improve urban schools by continuing to direct principals and superintendents to cannibalize one set of successful programs in order to shift resources to other areas of compelling need, contrary to the decisions of those closest to the needs of students, in response to whichever inequity of the month has captured the media's attention. And that's particularly true at a school such as Peirce, where the evidence is clear 53 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 that the decisions made by Mr. Willingham and his faculty are, in fact, working for the children. What I want to do, and what I know this Council and our citizens, our mayor, our mayor-elect and our governor want to do, is to help Shively Willingham and the staff and community of the Peirce School and schools all across this city maintain the rate of improvement they have shown over the last few years. That does not mean Monday morning quarterbacking their decisions, which were made intelligently and thoughtfully and collaboratively. It does not mean Hobbesian choices between kindergarten teachers and librarians, between classroom book collections for the 100 Book Challenge, as Mr. Willingham and his faculty have chosen at Peirce, or books for the school library or between music and art teachers and librarians. Instead, it means taking every possible opportunity for all of us who care about Philadelphia students to join in the fight for fair funding from Harrisburg. All of us should take our energy for the particular issue that most 54 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 touches our hearts and generates our active participation, be it smaller classes, before-school and after-school programs, or preschool programs or graphing calculators or classroom computers or school libraries -- all of which, research tells us, results in higher achievement -- and direct our energies towards the necessary crusade to give our schools and our children the funds they must have to continue on our current upward course. Madam Chair and members of this Council, there is no better example of the bitter choices that we have to make in this school district than the concern we are here to address today. 97, the 50 percent increase I mentioned earlier, this remains woefully inadequate. The statewide average for library spending per pupil is more than $12. Funding for our libraries -- like class sizes, the absence of prekindergarten, only half of the summer school program, woefully inadequate after-school programs, and teacher and principal 55 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 salaries that trail suburban teacher and principal salaries by huge amounts -- is at best unfair and unjust. Our commitment to continue to expand our spending is contained in our document "Fair Opportunities to Learn," adopted June a year ago by the Board of Education in conjunction with our increased graduation and promotion requirements, and they are attached to this testimony for your information. The Board of Education adopted those as the minimum resources our children and our teachers need to meet the standards necessary for success in college and on the job. 9 million for our libraries for the 2000-2001 school year. This will take us to the State average in spending on books.

In the subsequent two years, we will propose raising the spending on libraries to $28 per student for elementary students and $44 per student at the secondary level, the national average. These funds will also increase significantly the number 56 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 of schools that will have full-fledged Library Power Programs with full-time librarians. I will be pleased, at your convenience, to respond to any questions you may have.

Okay. Are there any questions of this witness from any members of the committee?

Madam Chair, at your request, we'll hold our comments in the interest of time, and then maybe we'll take a few questions a little later.

All right. This gentleman is representing yourself. Tom Gill?

Yes.

Marciene Mattleman and then Shelly Yanoff. (Above-named individuals come forward.)

Mr. Farnese is not here, am I correct? SUPT. HORNBECK: Mr. Farnese, I don't think is in the chamber this afternoon.

All right, thank you.

Thank you. My name is Tom 57 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Gill, G-I-L-L. I'm a professor of reading instruction at West Chester University. I've been a classroom teacher and a professor for over 30 years. I came to West Chester University five years ago to accept a position focussing on teaching current and future teachers to teach children in the inner city, 75 percent of whom nationwide are reading well below grade level, to read and become fully literate. I coordinate and teach in a masters and reading program held in the Bartram Cluster for K-to-3 teachers in two 14 schools, a program which includes not only 15 graduate course work and reading instruction but 16 also West Chester University professors teaching 17 side by side with the classroom teachers during 18 the school day. I talked with the teachers this 19 morning, and they're waiting for me for their 20 graduate class this afternoon and will meet into the evening. Over my career, I've learned what it takes for children to become literate. And in my experience with schools in and teachers, I've seen in Philadelphia and elsewhere why it too often 58 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 doesn't happen. I'm here today to support the resolution for school libraries. It is an essential piece of the literacy success puzzle, but I want to share with you why school libraries are necessary, but not sufficient, in the quest we all have: that all of Philadelphia school children become fully literate. And why this Council's attempts to bolster literacy, through mandated public school libraries, could ironically not move the literacy push an inch if this effort is not seen in the total context of the problem. For anyone to learn to read and become fully literate, two simple principles must be honored. First, one must do much reading. Reading only grows through practice, copious amounts of practice. No one, no one becomes literate without reading a lot, and few remain illiterate if they do. There are other things such as phonics, word studies, spelling, and how to guide reading for which we need skilled teachers. But no direct instruction will ever bear the fruit of literacy without great amounts of time spent in the act of 59 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 reading for meaning. Research has revealed that children who are in the top percentile in reading 5 achievement read every 8 days the number of words 6 that their grade-level peers whose reading 7 competence ranks them in the bottom 10 percentile 8 read in a year. This has been called the Matthew 9 effect -- the rich get richer and the poor get 10 poorer. And most of this reading takes place outside of school, as it has been estimated that nationally, elementary school children spend an average of only six minutes per day reading connected text. One simple solution, one simple principle that must be followed, then, is that children must spend much of the school day reading, as well as have ample opportunities to read outside of school. However, there is one huge catch. The second principle to be honored is that reading practice must take place in books that are not to easy and not to hard; in other words, in books that are of a goodness of fit with one's present reading level. The problem is that all across 60 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 America, children are given books whose level is determined by the grade they are in rather than by the children's actual reading level. Nationally at any grade level, 50 percent of children read at grade level and above and 50 percent read below grade level. In the suburbs, where 80 percent or more of the children read at grade level or above, grade-level reading materials fit most of the children well enough. However, in the inner cities of this country, 75 percent or more of the children are reading well below grade level -- and not through any fault of their parents or their teachers.

As the recent Inquirer editorial stated, children from privileged literate households are read to 1500 hours before coming to school, while children from indigent families are read to less than 50. Yet, on entering school, they are given the same grade-level basal reading books as suburban children. The American school clique and materials have evolved to fit privileged children, not all children. Children who read in the top quartile -- a large percentage of the children in the 61 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 suburban schools -- when reading their grade-level books make on an average of to errors per 100 words, can read the material fluently, and can understand the material. Therefore, reading is pleasurable, satisfying, and they tend to do a lot of it. Children in the same grade who are reading in the bottom quartile -- a large percentage of the children here in Philadelphia -- when reading these same grade-level books, make an average of errors per 100, read the material 13 disfluently, and, therefore, therefore cannot 14 comprehends it. Therefore, reading is painful, 15 frustrating, and they tend to avoid it whenever 16 they can. And so would we. 17 People say that challenge is good, but 18 if it were good for the goose, it would be good for the gander. If we put suburban children in material where they were making 18 errors per 100 words, it would stop their progress cold. And that is what we do every day in inner cities. I challenge each of you to go into elementary, middle, or high-school classroom and ask the students to read to you from what they are 62 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 given to read. If they make more than to errors per 100 words -- is better -- remember, 4 the best readers continue to grow the fastest 5 because they read materials in which they make 1 to 2 errors per 100 words. If you find that they make more than 5 to 10 errors per 100 words, the material is too hard, and little or no growth will be made by trying to read that material. A proper match is the secret of every reading center. Emmett Betts, the godfather of the reading named it "instructional level" here at his reading center at Temple University. It's the secret of successful intervention programs such as Marie Clay's Reading Recovery, Robert Slavin's Success For All, and Philadelphia's 100 Book Challenge. And yet, it is the principle most violated every day. It is what the school system of Philadelphia has appropriately made the core of its balanced reading curriculum -- that each child be given a running record; that is, that the teacher listen to each child read from several different levels of stories to find the one that is of goodness of fit for optimal growth. And what does this have to do with the 63 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 library issue? No child can become literate simply by reading the classroom basal reading book, even if it were on the right level. One must read many, many more stories and books. Second, the school children of Philadelphia range in reading ability in any one grade roughly by two-thirds of their age; therefore, there's a four-year reading range at 1st grade from the lowest reader to the highest and a seven-year range by 5th grade. By 8th grade, only percent of the students read at 8th-grade level, and the rest above and below -- mainly below by grade and varying degrees. One size does not, cannot fit all. There must be a source of many, many books written on many levels for children at each grade level. Children should be reading approximately 40 percent of their language arts block, writing 30 percent, working on skills such as phonics 20 percent, and being read to 10 percent. That's what's meant by a proper diet, a proper balance. And Philadelphia's Balanced Literacy Curriculum has this right. This means that children should be reading about an hour each 64 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 day.

It is recommended that a third of that reading should be in stories or in expository informational text guided by the teacher. The rest should be in class, peer, or independent reading. What if all the materials necessary for this reading were housed in the library? An elementary school with 4 classes per grade has 600 pupils K to 4th grade. Each pupil would need to be helped to select independent reading books, and each of the teachers would need to check out 13 multiple copies of 15 different stories for a 14 guided reading for that week, a logistical 15 nightmare. 16 What every Philadelphia classroom 17 teacher needs is what, for all intents and 18 purposes, every suburban teacher has: classroom 19 collections of books and story sets at the various 20 reading levels that reflect the reading levels of the students and a school library filled with additional books at all reading levels. Each of your Philadelphia elementary teachers at any one grade has children reading at five distinct reading levels across the school year. In order 65 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 to progress our children from one to the next, she needs stories for guided reading under her 4 direction at their level. And in addition, the 5 child needs to read 25 story books at that level. 6 This material is what the teacher minimally needs 7 at hand in the classroom. And then children need 8 to do copious amounts of independent reading at 9 home during free time, etc. 10 As a recent Philadelphia Inquirer 11 editorial stated, principals in Philadelphia have 12 been given the autonomy to use book funds at their 13 discretion. The editorial stated that some have 14 chosen to spend the money on books for the 15 classroom rather than for the library. But the truth is that they haven't been given nearly enough money to even begin to minimally equip either. William Styron wrote a book called Sophie's Choice in which a mother is given the impossible, moral choice of deciding which of her children doesn't go to the gas chamber. I've come to know well the school principals in the Bartram cluster, and they all care deeply about literacy and the future of their children. But in the 66 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 past, they've been given Sophie's choice. And their teachers, with whom I work every day and whom I consider heroes, want nothing more than the chance to give their children the materials which will allow them to prove to the world that they are just as capable of becoming literate as you and I, as your children and mine. The solution for this dilemma is not to mandate that these principals rob Peter to pay Paul and put their meager funds into the noble goal of a better equipped library. I support the full funding of school libraries. It is a must. " Mandatory libraries, like mandatory achievement, without providing the means to reach that goal is not only useless, it's cruel. It provides the rationale to blame the victim and those good educators on the front lines who are asked to accomplish a difficult tasks without the necessary tools, who are asked to make Sophie's choice and then held accountable for all of their children's protection. I really don't know Dr. Hornbeck. I've 67 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 met him a couple of times but have basically seen him in the paper. Actually, I wrote that before the election. Since the election, I was going to say he's my best friend. But I really don't know him and I'm surprised at how much of what he said is really in congruence with what I see from my position is just purely trying to look at what is the best for children to become literate. But I know that he has it dead right when he says that the problem is not the shifting of meager funds within the city, but the inequities across the Commonwealth for public-school funding.

Don't force those administrators and teachers whom we charge with helping our children become literate to play the political game of selecting one shell to place one small pea under, or of your selecting it for them. Sophie shouldn't have been asked or forced to make a choice between her children. It drove her to madness. And as I work with these good teachers and administrators who are trying desperately to attain what they know is so very possible -- the full literacy of all their students -- without the necessary books, class size and support to pull it 68 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 off, I fear not only for their children but for them. Yes, again, I ask that you support this resolution. But I ask you too to realize that without more support, it is only moving too meager sources from one wrong to another. I ask you to have the courage and the will to make the other resolutions for the changes that must take place simultaneously for the desired effect to be achieved. 1. That class size be at least as manageable as it is in the suburbs so that the teacher has a chance at the differentiation of instruction that must take place. 2. That each teacher be given the training and support needed to directly assess each of her students to determine what materials and strategies will promote optimal literacy for each of her pupils. 3. That each classroom be fully stocked with stories and books of a number and range of reading levels that will allow enough guided and independent classroom reading. 4. That each school's library be fully 69 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 stocked with books of all types and content and staffed by librarians knowledgeable enough to help each teacher help each child readily locate the books that will provide the optimal reading challenge, while speaking to each child's heart and mind. 5. Last, that this Council resolve to fight tirelessly and ceaselessly for full, equitable funding, and resolve not to be a party to any game of shifting too meager funds and thereby pitting teachers against administrators, administrators against parents, parents against Council, the Council against the School Board, rather than all joining together to work as a united front for the full funding of its children's public education. There is no grant, no Walter Annenberg, no Pew Charitable Trusts that will ever provide, can ever provide, the funds that are needed for Philadelphia schools to match suburban schools' class size, teacher support, and books and materials in the classroom and in the library. But there doesn't have to be. We have the money right here in the households, businesses, and 70 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 corporations of this Commonwealth. Public schools were formed to provide equal opportunities for all, for the common good. Let's all face the hard truth of the real needs from where the means to meet the needs must come. I urge this Council to resolve that it will accept no less, that it will not be a party to Sophie's Choice when it comes to its children's literacy, to its children's lives. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Thank you. My name is Marcy Mattleman. I want to thank the members of Council for this opportunity. I've worked with many Councilmembers in a variety of things that I have done, all of which have literacy as a major focus Temple University where I train teachers in the teaching of reading and language skills, working with both Mayor Goode and Mayor Rendell on literacy, chairing the Board of Trustees of the Free Library, and serving now at the pleasure of President Clinton on the Board of the National 71 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Institute for Literacy. In my current position as Executive Director of Philadelphia Reads, I work directly with schools all the time. And I've been saddened through the years to see the diminution of the libraries in school buildings. For more than 150 years, teachers were the major resource for children's learning. The teacher stood at the front of the room, and the chairs were in rows, and there was the teacher as the resource. But as classrooms have changed from rows to desks and moveable furniture, work stations, computer- assisted instruction, teachers are only one of the many resources, and libraries are an absolute necessity in every school. While Philadelphia Reads has collected and distributed more than 24,000 books to schools -- and they've been contributed by people from all over the region -- and funded 370 classes with $1,000 each for independent reading books for the 100 Book Challenge -- and in that program, as was mentioned earlier, the basic premise is, the more you read, the better you read, and that is certainly supported by research -- a well-stocked school 72 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 library continues to be basic to any teaching and learning environment. Approximately 80 percent of the children in Philadelphia's public schools are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. They don't come from families that have lots of extra money to spend on books, and many of their parents are understandably concerned with their own survival so they don't go to read to their kids at bedtime. Many parents, as a result of social promotion, which has fortunately stopped, cannot read well themselves. And research shows that in homes of very poor children, there is on the average less than one book in a household, often just a phone book. The kids for the most part don't get adequate whiled child care, not enough attend Head Start, these are not the kids who play word games at dinner time or while riding with their parents while on auto trips. They don't have books of their own, nor the pleasure that most of us have experienced in this room of reading under the covers at night with a flashlight, hoping our parents wouldn't find out. Forty-five percent of those kids don't read well 73 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 and independently by the end of 3rd grade, and kids who don't at that stage are less likely to catch up and are more likely to get involved in antisocial behaviors, drop out, and become delinquents. There is an explosion now in the field of reading. The federal government has funded the Reading Excellence Act, the State has funded Read to Succeed. But kids still don't have books in school to learn from, to enjoy, and books to remember. I think if we asked anybody in this room, what book do you remember from childhood? we could all remember books. Research shows that the existence of a school library is correlated positively with academic success. Yet in the 70s, when Title I money formerly earmarked for school libraries was reallocated for block grants, libraries and schools have been neglected. Many districts instead use the money for computers and other priorities. And in the '80s, when State funding lessened due to budget crises, school libraries stopped playing an important role in the education of children. 74 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Now, Education Week reports that the situation is slightly better because some states are taking action.

Mississippi, a state sorely lacking in school library sources, has just increased its funding by millions of dollars. And California, the state with the worst record for school library expenditures, is devoting $150 million to restocking shelves, which have been depleted for years. Chicago, concerned about low reading achievement of its students, has created a Department of Libraries and Information Resources, with a $2 million budget, and recently spent $500,000 for books. Upgrading a library means getting rid of books that are worn, racist, sexist, outdated and inaccurate, as mentioned earlier. The stereotypes the exist in the books our children are using will probably shock all of you. And while the name Zimbabwe came into being in the '80s, you can't find it in books in many Philadelphia school libraries. The Philadelphia public schools have a student population of 215,000 children, and although all principals want school libraries, 75 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 they have the discretion to spend funds as they need them. And as Superintendent Hornbeck mentioned, it's really unfair to ask the principal to make that decision between a 1st-grade teacher and a librarian, between a technology lab and a librarian or after-school music. Every school should have a library, and that library should be the center of activity in each school. Library Power, was mentioned earlier, there are only 28 Library Power public schools in Philadelphia. They each have a full trained librarian who works with classroom teachers and planning curriculum and provides resources at varied levels so that all kids can get involved in doing research. Many kids even ask to stay in for lunch and recess. The library's open all day and students come and go as they carry out assignments. And because the librarian is keyed into classroom studies, he or she is able to help. A visit to the Hartranft School will make any visitors converts as they see elementary school kids using the many resources a library can provide. Such a program is not a frill or an 76 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 option. There is ample evidence that libraries do enhance student achievement, regardless of socioeconomic level. I'm certain that other people testifying today will cite the same sorry statistics. 75 per child on libraries. 47. And each of us needs to do something about that. While we can start a book drive on our block or in our place of employment or, as Councilman Kenney did, have a book drive, or my friend Rosemary Greco, who asks everybody who came to her house last Thanksgiving for dinner, all 35 people to bring a book, that's not long-term change. We need to let principals know that we care about libraries in schools. We have to contact our Congressmen to support HR Bill 3008, whose purpose is to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to provide funds for professional librarians and up-to-date library resources. Moreover, let's make sure that the City 77 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 schools have adequate funding to do what needs to be done to assure that our kids learn. While there is still a gap of $1900 -- and you hard it earlier, and I think it's worth repeating -- between the cost of an education per child in Philadelphia and the average spending per child for kids in nearby suburbs, our principals have to make hard choices. Since the ability to read is clearly the basic skill that helps assure each individual's key to a future, we need to make sure that school libraries are a vital part of that equation. Thank you very much. )

Thank you. Shelly?

Thank you. Before I start, I just want to commend the students from the Communications Charter, I believe, who are models of --

Actually, they have to go back. So, Mr. Shelkrot and the librarians and all of you folks, Dr. Rush, good to have you, we'll hope you'll be a little patient 78 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 because they have to leave. So we'll get them as soon as you leave so that they can get back to Southwest Philadelphia. Thank you, Mr. Johnson.

Good afternoon, Council. I'm Shelly Yanoff, Executive Director of PCCY, the region's child advocacy organization. Thank you for holding hearing and for the opportunity of testifying. I will talk quickly and briefly. A recently retired principal from an elementary school in the suburbs phoned me the other day to say how upset she was at learning how shortchanged Philadelphia children are on having access to libraries. She spoke of how exciting libraries should be learning centers for children and schools, and that often kids learn there for the first time to become comfortable with themselves and the world of books. I agreed. The lack of skilled staff and well-supplied libraries are just one more example of how hard it is to be a Philadelphia family, a Philadelphia child. Children are simply not center-stage. Until some horrible thing happens to them, they do not command attention. 79 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 In the last election, we talked about governance but we didn't talk about the real stuff. We didn't talk about the real losses that we watch our kids absorb year after year. As you well know, you few who are here, we have lost music and art and have fallen behind in the comparisons in class size and teacher and principal salaries and special reading programs, among others things, in last decade. Today, we'll talk about libraries for a minute, but it's just another example of how much our kids are losing. We will know note that we spend about one-fifth of what's spent nationally on elementary-school children for libraries, and about one-eight of what's spent on high-school books. We'll note that just across City Line, in Lower Merion, they spend about four times what we spend on library services. We will note that the average number of students to librarians here is almost three times the national average. So how do we presume to expect our kids to compete, to secure their share in the job market in higher education? We want our kids to make miracles. Some do, but many can't. 80 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Most of this, of course, boils down to money. We know that you agree with us that we need a fair, equitable public-school funding system in this state. We are going with hundreds of people next week to press the case for more funding. In fact, a bill will be introduced for full funding next Tuesday. We hope that you will join us in pushing for that bill. But even in that fight, as long as it will take, school libraries will be hidden. Until we really secure full funding, our schools will continue to have to choose between libraries and reading teachers, supplies and a host of needed programs. School libraries are hidden even in the school districts, competing with support for other valuable needs and programs. We've talked a little bit about the Library Power Program. I won't dwell on it except to say that 20 years ago, if you had a pilot that you could show worked, you would expect it to ignite the whole system. And now, instead, its life is fragile. Like the schools, this Council is called on often to make difficult choices. You'll 81 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 shortly be asked to approve more Tax Increment Financing Districts, TIFs, which are built on the presumption that more jobs will be created and, therefore, more benefits will accrue to the City and all of its citizens. We agree that we must do all we can to bring in more industry, more development, and more permanent jobs -- but not at the expense of the schools. Somehow, the current proposals have the schools bearing the burden of costs of lost revenue growth and the funds. The schools cannot afford the loss, but they appear to have no 14 ability to resist the pressure or to argue for a better deal. Thus, there will be even less for libraries in future years comparatively. This not acceptable. You can make a difference. We don't believe it has to be this way.

You could assure that the School District would be made and kept whole from the City's expected return on the funds. You could take a portion of the City's TIF revenue and dedicate it to those parts of a child's education and development that have lost support in recent years, that are critical, that 82 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 are discrete, and too often, dismissed as fringe. You could specify library, music, and art programs in the schools as part of the City's expected return on the TIF funds. We are asking today that you help take the future of our children out of the shadows by linking City action with support for kids. Every time the City gives a benefit, every time, we should build in support for discretionary funds for youth, to make Philadelphia a better place for people to raise children and to be a child. We find the funds when kids are in crisis, but we have not found the public will to secure regular sustainable funds to provide our children with what they need to so that they and we are not in crisis, so that they and we have a better future. Yesterday's news stories reported that the City continues to lose more young families than other cities around the nation. Whether it's TIFs or bonding authorities or stadium tickets, the City will not be able to grow, as I know you all want it to, unless we figure out ways to find more resources to support our children and families to make this city a better place to raise 83 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 kids. We, therefore, urge that Philadelphia seek funding from all resources to make the City's children able to have more access to libraries, more art, and more music programs, and more youth development activities. Other cities are creating children's trust funds and other funds to support programs like this. We do not do it and we are continuing to watch funding and our children's opportunities decrease. We shouldn't. We urge you to move the support of children and families into the center of your deliberations on this and all issues. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Councilman Kenney?

Thank you, Madam Chair. All of the people who have testified here today so far on this particular issue, I do not disagree with their concept and their position on these issues. I think the problem that face, and we've been facing now for a number of years, 84 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 is that simply saying that it so does not change the situation. Introducing a bill in Harrisburg to provide full funding, quote/unquote, does not, and will, not change the problem, because our governor, who's going to be our governor, I guess, until the year 2002 or thereabouts, and a legislature that is predominated predominantly Republican by a vast margin in the Pennsylvania Senate and by, I guess, three or four or five votes in the House, is never going to change that funding formula until there is a new administration. And the question I have -- or I guess the frustration that I feel is that what have we you done in an effort to meet them and their -- even if we disagree with their idealogies, somewhere halfway so that we could obtain the dollars, or some of the dollars, that we've been talking about for libraries, for smaller class size, for books and materials, for increases in teachers' salaries and principals' salaries. I'm frustrated here today, as you are, because we've talking about this stuff for years. And we haven't been able to effect the political change 85 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 necessary to get anything accomplished. And the problem is, is that for us as Philadelphians to get on a bunch of buses and ride up to Harrisburg and march around the capitol building makes some of those guys from the hinter lands happy because they can go back to their constituents and say, We've been fighting against Philadelphia and that money pit out there in the east, and we're not giving into them and we're not giving them any more money. And guys have had careers built on fighting Philadelphia in that regard. And I don't want to get into any specific issues of vouchers and other things that we've discussed over the years and people's philosophical opposition to even considering the discussion of things like that that have been on the front burner for many people in the legislature and for the governor. But simply saying that we demand full funding doesn't mean we get it. And simply saying that we're going to request it and we're going to fight for it doesn't mean we're going to get it. And going into federal court means that sometimes we get thrown 86 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 out. And going into State court sometimes means we get thrown out more than once. I mean, I don't know what we're being asked to do because the comparison to the suburban school districts and the $1900 gap, which I do not deny and acknowledge, in the minds of suburban legislators and suburban residents exists by virtue of a gap in the real-estate taxes that they pay in Lower Merion, as opposed to what is paid here in Philadelphia. And I don't know of any circumstance or political scenario where you're going to get a legislator or a senator from a highly real-estate taxed community to say that the 60 percent that the State provides to the City, coupled with the City's contribution to its own school district, creates this 1900 or $2,000 gap. You don't find, and will not find, sympathy for that position. That's one frustration. The second frustration is an issue that you've raised relative to TIFs. I believe, firmly believe -- and Councilmember DiCicco can speak for himself and other members can speak for themselves -- that a TIF is not a tax giveaway. We have not 87 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 the money to give away without the development of the project. And we have been told, and maybe we're being lied to, that the project will not go forward and will not be developed without the tax increment financing to support the financing package to do the TIF.

So to take the position that somehow we're giving tax money away that could go to some other worthwhile or worthy project I don't believe is accurate. Because the money that's related to the TIF is not collectible unless the project gets done. And if the project doesn't get done without the TIF, we're not giving anything away but a vacant lot or a vacant structure or an empty parcel of land. And that's -- I guess the frustration is that we're here banging our heads against these Council walls and then sometimes going to Harrisburg and banging our heads against those walls, and nothing's going to change under the current set of circumstances. So I've been one that's advocated, in the past, sitting down with the governor -- not this year, not last year, but maybe three four years ago, to work out some arrangement to try to 88 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 trade some votes on issues of vouchers, issues of charters, and public-school funding in Philadelphia. And no one's done that. The Mayor hasn't done it, the School District hasn't done it, legislators in Philadelphia haven't been interested in doing it. And until we get another governor -- whether it's Ed Rendell or Bobby Casey or some other Democrat -- I don't know when this is going to change. And I don't want to sacrifice, continue to sacrifice the futures of kids who are waiting as freshmen, going into freshman year in high school now, going into the kindergarten now, until we get a year or two or three years from now, till we change the way this school district's funded and its formula. What can we do -- and this is a rhetorical question that I don't have the answer to. What can we do now, and should we have done that we didn't do to put ourselves in a better negotiating position. 'Cause our negotiating position is simply, We need more money, you're being unfair, give it to us. And they say no. 25 John Perzel says no. Tom Ridge says no. And I 89 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 don't know who else to talk to, because our own legislators won't be supportive. No one's arguing that the legislators in the State legislature in Philadelphia, both in the Senate and the House, are going to be unsupportive of this kind of effort to bring more money to our public schools. But we don't live in the state of Philadelphia; we live in the state of Pennsylvania. And we all want what was testified to. The money's not there. And what do we do about that.

May I respond?

Rhetorically.

I wish I could really respond because what you're asking for are very hard questions. But I just want to clarify that I'm not suggesting that we oppose TIFs. I'm suggesting that the return on the TIFs, that the City take some of its anticipated return and shift it to the School District for those discrete programs about which we're not -- we don't have a fight. We don't have a fight about music or art or libraries or what we're here about today. 90 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 There are differences of opinion that exist on other things, but there are discrete -- it seems that seems that with the TIFs, which we should be trying to find every possible way to bring money in, but because the legislature passed -- in its authorizing legislation only allows certain taxes, we're stuck with it being the taxes that most impact on the schools. All I'm suggesting is that we look at those deals -- not to stop tell me but to say, Can we shift some of that to make the School District whole so that we don't -- I know we're not taking money away, but we're taking growth away, and everybody has to grow their dollars. So that's what I'm suggesting and I'm urging you not to say no to it until we think about whether we could do that just on, Can this be the fund for libraries. Can we say that when we start getting the funds back, the payback, that we give an extra bump to the School District because, according to all the formula I saw -- and I came to the briefing, and apart from the newspapers, I also came to the briefing -- it appears that the School District is having to bear 91 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 a heavier brunt. It doesn't make sense. That's at the local level. The other local level that we were talking about was the stadium issue and all issues that every time the City does something, we figure out a way to get the kids in the center.

Excuse me. Let me say, we only have -- I'm going to lose the kids. I promised them that they could talk. And then we can come back to this. I promised the kids and I promised Mr. Shelkrot that they could get in and out. And then we can explore this as we need to. Councilman DiCicco?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to make just one very brief comment and --

And we'll still have you comment, Superintendent Hornbeck. We don't want to cut it off; we're just trying not to lose anybody.

Not to get into a debate on the TIF, but I concur with everything Councilman Kenney said. 92 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 But there is a benefit to the School District as a result of TIFs, because the majority of the TIFs to date that we have awarded are for the development of hotels. Hotels are part of the new industry, or the expansion of the hospitality and tourism industry in the City of Philadelphia. When tourists come into the city, they go to theaters, they go to restaurants, they go to bars, and they spend money. We do receive the benefit of the liquor-by-the-drink tax. So the more people we bring into the city to spend that disposable income, either by way of conventions or vacationers or what have you, we are getting a benefit. And I understand and am not debating that we shouldn't do TIFs. And I think that, yes, we can look and we will continue to look at ways of taking -- we have done some of that in a number of TIFs. Now, there's some TIFs where the deal just won't happen if it is structured in such a way that maybe the U&O, as an example, which was a TIF I introduced last week, that deal won't happen unless we give some relieve on the U&O. But that is one of the few that had to be structured that 93 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 way. But understand that when that development is completed, there will be a significant number of new jobs created. Most of the jobs will be in the service industry, creating more restaurants and things of that type of activity, and in addition to creating an environment for people to move into the City that are now suburban residents, who are looking to move into Center City. They've become members of our community, they spend their disposable income in Philadelphia 7 days a week, 365 days a year. So there are some benefits. But to suggest -- and I don't think you really meant it to be that way, and I understand that. But for the benefit of others, that TIFs are giveaways, you can't give something away that you don't have. And, again, I'm not going to -- you and I aren't going to debate that 'cause I didn't think you meant it that way. But I think that is the way it is normally understood by people who don't understand what TIFs are all about.

Thank you. 94 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 And if we can hold this off just a moment, we can come back to this, but the kids have to go and then Mr. Shelkrot has to go, so we want to get them all. We had a couple -- four rows of students. We do thank them all and thank those had that had to leave from charter schools that I support so much. We do want to ask if Mr. Vernard is -- Shelly, if you can stay, we can come back and finish the discussion, and I promised Superintendent Hornbeck that he can make a comment on that. But I got to let the kids go 'cause they'll lose their ride, and then we'll come back to it. Please come forward, the students.

Madam Chair, I just want to be excused for one moment.

Certainly.

I have to go to my office for a second but I'll be listening on the -- I'll have the speaker on in there.

Thank you, thank you for your input in this committee.

But I have to go 95 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 because somebody's been waiting for me in my office for an hour.

Thank you thank you for your input in this committee. (Students come forward.)

Thank you very much. We are glad to have you. I see you are here with Mr. Vernard Johnson, Healthy Family Healthy Life. We're glad to have you. Please introduce yourself and make your statement. Mr. Shelkrot, we'll get you next. I know you have a meeting. Thank you. Give us your name, please, and then make your statement.

Good afternoon. My name is Charvon Vincent, and I'm a 10th-grade student at World Communications Charter School.

All right. Talk right into that microphone so we can hear you. Would you say your name again.

My name is Charvon Vincent, and I'm a 10th-grade student at World Communications Charter School, and I'm serving a six-week internship with Healthy Family Healthy 96 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Life. We're here today to tell you the importance of libraries in our schools and neighborhood, and now I'm going to read the library compact. We believe in the library for its nurturing of our children and youth, opening doors to the wonder and excitement of the world of ideas. . . UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: . . . Dedication to literacy, giving to all a key to fulfillment. . .

. . . A commitment to diversity, a foundation of pluralism, democracy, and peace.

My name is Jendayi Muncu. I'm also a 10th-grade student and (unintelligible).

Spell your name for us, please.

J-E-N-D-A-Y-I, M-U-N-C-U. And I'm also serving six-week internship. . . . Reservoir of memory --

We're having a 97 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 hard time hearing you. Talk right into the microphone, please, and a little louder.

Reservoir of memory, linking the records of yesterday with the possibilities of tomorrow. . .

. . . Continuing of knowledge ever open to the changing form and flow of information.

. . . Treasurer of reading, where muse and spirits enrich the soul and dreams ignite discovery.

For these reasons, the library is essential to our lives, and we pledge ourselves that (unintelligible) and its support.

Thank you. Would you spell your first name, please.

C-H-A-R-V-O-N.

Thank you.

Now we will be hearing from my fellow peers and their experience at the library and their opinions on why libraries are such an essential part of our children and families' progress. Thank you. 98 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540

Thank you. And always remember, students, the word is library, not "li-barry." It's L-I-B-R-A-R-Y. Sorry, guys. It's the former teacher in me. Can't help it.

My name is Jendayi Muncu, and I'll be telling you what libraries can offer the school and the community. Students can go to the library to research about colleges and do reports. They can also read for fun and expand their horizons. The libraries also offer special programs for after school and in summer, such as the Summer Reading Program, which gives children incentive for reading books. They can also gain access to the Internet, and the library has a wide range of special departments, from music to literature to newspaper. It is also safe, clean, and quiet so people of all ages can do homework and they can spend time with each other. In closing, the library is not only for students; it's a place for their entire family to 99 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 go. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Tianna Robinson, T-I-A-N-N-A, Robinson. And I'm a 10th-grade student at the World Communications Charter School, and I'm serving a six-week internship with Healthy Family Healthy Life. Today I had a chance to visit the Free Library of Philadelphia, the main branch at 19th and Vine Street, and I was mainly in the video department. And I would just like to take a few minutes of your time to tell you about the importance of the video department in the library. First of all, they have videos for the whole family for free, and they have a large variety. They have dramas, comedies, they have old TV programs such as Cheers, The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Love Lucy, and many more. They had many different versions of classical opera such as MacBeth, Bye-Bye Birdie. Not only do they have stuff for entertainment, but they have educational stuff like documentaries, tapes on U.S. history. They 100 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 had the whole MacArthur collection, and they had (unintelligible) videos and language videos. Thank you.

Miss Robinson, did you say Cheers was an old TV show?

Yes.

She said yes.

Did you ever hear of The Honeymooners? (Laughter.)

That is old for me. Cheers is recent.

My name is Johnine Ricketcs.

Spell it for us, please.

J-O-H-N-I-N-E, R-I-C-K-E-T-C-S. I'm an 11th-grader at World Communications Charter School. And the importance of a library to me is for the high-school students to have important projects to do who might not have books and stuff at home, but they might have the important stuff that we need, so we have to go 101 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 to the library to get the information. So the point is to me is the quietness 'cause some houses are loud, and we need quietness, so we have the library to go to and to concentrate when we get a good grade on our projects. And I also think it's good for little kids to stay off the corners and off the blocks, and they can go there for after-school curriculums and for reading, story times, and movie times. And I feel as though it's also good enough to keep the teenagers out of trouble, so the teenagers come -- and too, the little kids and help the kids that don't have the opportunity to learn in school and they can go to the library and learn how to read an everything else. So I feel as though the library is a good thing for us to have in school and out of school, to help us with the education and keep us out of trouble and give us the experience with the little kids.

Thank you very much. You had another comment?

I just wanted to say that 102 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 at our school, we don't have a library, and I think that it's important for us to have a library because some of us don't have libraries in our neighborhoods, and we depend on the library at school for information, but we don't have it. And I think that that's a serious problem that we need to address. Thank you.

Thank you. For those of you who didn't hear her, she said that they don't have a library in their school and that it's a hardship, and they're upset because they don't have one in their neighborhood either. And you have just stated the reason why we are here. I believe narrowly that we have a lot of State issues to deal with, and God knows, we need our share of funding, but we also need to consider what we can do at our level too as we structure education at the board level, to include a way to have a library curriculum. So I think we've got to have short-term and long-term plans, small plans and bigger plans, and I'm hoping that out of this hearing that we can consider that. 103 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 And while I'm talking, let me too welcome the principal of Peirce School who was referred to in the superintendent's testimony. Would you stand and be recognized. We thank you for the great job that you are doing. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Thank you very much, students. Thank you, Mr. Vernard Johnson for what you do and for having these students from World Communications Charter School come before us as interns. We thank you all. And thank you, Brenda Cooper. I know you're there helping to transport them. Thank you very much. That's Brenda Cooper from Horizon House. Thank you. (Applause.)

And now we will move right along. I know we're rushing, but I'm trying to keep it moving 'cause it's getting late. We'll now have Elliot Shelkrot and the special guests and literacy organizations. Included in that, we want Janet Dubinsky. We have 104 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Rex Parker. I'm sorry, Debra Gniewek. I can't forget you. Your presentation was absolutely excellent, and we have a lot of information there, but would some of these folks come forward now and have a seat so that we kind of hold you up much longer. (Witnesses come forward.)

Ms. Gniewek, certainly we want you back up, your presentation was excellent. Please come forward also with the panel, if you would like. Or if you want to wait for Mr. Hornbeck -- how ever you're comfortable. I know you were up there and we pulled you away. (Ms. Gniewek responds off-mike.)

Okay, thank you, thank you. We'll come back to you. And so we have the head of our Free Library and we have a panel to -- I will mention some names and we'll see who we have. Mary Jane Zimmerman, Association of School Librarians; Carol Heinsdorf, Association of Philadelphia School Librarians; Karen Talarico, Friends of the Free Library; Jane Hileman, Philadelphia Reads; 105 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Fran Aulston, the Cultural Alliance; Dee Phillips, PFT -- if you're here; Francina Emery, Multicultural Resource Center; and Janet Dubinsky, Garden Court Civic Association. After this, I know -- we'll get one panel and I promise you we'll get you all out so that we don't hold you up too late at the end of the day, all right? And the first one will certainly be the head of our Free Library, who you just heard about his great resources with old, old films like Cheers. (Laughter.)

Francina Emery, Councilwoman Blackwell called your name. Do you want to just move up to the front beyond the gates.

Okay, we're ready for you. Thank you.

I'm Elliot Shelkrot, Director of the Free Library. I would like to thank Council for inviting me to make a presentation this morning. I've distributed my testimony. I'm not going to read it all. I would 106 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 just like to summarize what I believe are the key points. I'm specifically addressing the issue in the resolution that talks about how the Free Library of Philadelphia and perhaps its branches can do things to support the school library program. And I'd like to cover three main areas. One is the different difference between school libraries and the public library; second of all, what we are doing to support youngsters in Philadelphia who are in school; and, third, a brief -- some recommendations. The Free Library is, of course, the public library for the City of Philadelphia. We have 49 branches and 3 regionals plus the Central Library, and a library for the blind and physically handicapped. The library is an educational and a cultural institution that supports recreational reading, lifelong learning, and provides information for people of all backgrounds. The Free Library is staffed. The librarians are professional master's-degreed librarians who, along with many, many support 107 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 staff, provide the information and cultural resources that our libraries have to people of all ages throughout the City. The school libraries, on the other hand, are educational institutions that support the curriculum and the classroom learning needs of the children they serve. School libraries are staffed by teacher-librarians. They are teachers who also have training and background in working with libraries. And their skills are to instruct youngsters on how to use the library, how to seek information, and especially how to help the teachers and the students in the classrooms and in their instructional program. There has been a great deal of research on the importance of libraries and the importance of school libraries specifically. I won't go over that in my oral testimony, but I believe it's important to understand that there is a distinction, although our public libraries do a great deal that support the efforts of the schools and the educational programs. And I want to tell you a little bit about some of those programs. There's over a 108 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 dozen of them. I'm not going to go over a dozen programs, but there are five key programs that I'd like to tell you about. The first is the visits to schools that our librarians make. Our librarians visit every single school in the School District of Philadelphia twice a year --- every elementary school and every secondary and every multigrade school. In addition to that, we visit the parochial schools and the non-public schools and do our best to reach the new charter schools and other educational institutions around the city. At these visits to the schools, we visit classrooms, we talk about the library resources, we talk about the richness of the resources that one can find in the library, and we try to give an instructional program that is useful to youngsters in school and in their educational program. Our LEAP Program, which is our after-school program, for the first time this year, with City Council, with City funds and the support of City Council, added to the private money that we have been to get from various 109 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 foundations. We now have the LEAP after-school programs in 40 of our branches, and for the first time, it is days a week. 5 The primary intent is to meet the needs of parents who are working so that we can be a part of the solution to that growing problem of -- well, the problem isn't that more parents are working; it's the challenge to make sure that in this welfare-to-work environment, that there is after-school care for the youngsters.

In that program, some 70,000 youngsters will partake, getting assistance with their homework and getting instruction using computers, and getting help in our cultural enrichment programs. An added component to that is the team leadership assistance. In every single branch of the city, there are at least two young people, teenagers from the high school, who are hired by the library on a part-time basis to help after school and occasionally on Saturdays, are given special training by college students in the use of technology so that they can help their peers, their little brothers and sisters, their parents, their grandparents in using the new information 110 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 technology in the schools. They have in and of themselves put on 2,000 different -- over 2,000 different workshops in 45 library locations around the city. Another key component of our program to support the activities in the schools are class visits. Last year 4,500 classes from the schools -- from the public schools alone, I should say -- came to our libraries, where we provide orientations to the libraries, we provide story hours, help with special research projects. And these are done during the two mornings a week that most of -- that our branches are open. Our regional branches are open three mornings a week, but our branches are only open two mornings a week. One of most exciting projects that we are now involved in involves a collaborative program with the School District as we went together to seek federal money that was administered by the State. It's focussed on electronic resources. And this is at the Edison Cluster, working with the high school as well as the five other schools -- Potter, Welsh, Julia 111 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 DeBurgos, and others in that cluster. And the purpose of this is to see if we can develop a seamless web of information, that youngsters in the schools can go to the catalog, the online catalog and find out not only what they have in their school but what is available in the schools nearby and what's available in their neighborhood branch or the Central Library. And not only find out what books are there, but the beauty of this program -- and it is just in a pilot now, we are trying to get a sense of how it would work most effectively and efficiently and what the cost would be. But the beauty of this program is that it also enables the many, many specialized data bases that we buy with taxpayers money to be available to the youngsters in the schools from the computers and the school libraries or other places. The only thing they need is a Free Library card -- something we hope and we are trying to make sure that every youngster in the schools have. And some of these special databases are Spanish language databases, databases on 112 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 African-American history, well over 5,000 different magazines, many encyclopedias. And if we can in this model learn how to do this effectively, I believe it offers an opportunity for an economic way to provide a vast amount of material and resources for youngsters in every school in the city. The question is, what more can be done? We could do a lot more. We could open our libraries five mornings a week instead of just two. We could have our libraries open on Sundays so that families can come together on another day. You know that we now have our branches open on Saturdays but we know that there are more families who want to come to our libraries and just don't have the time. And there are other things. But we can't do these things at the expense of the public library system, which is now coming into a greater flowering, with the help of City Council and the private money, because the public library, of course, serves the needs of youngsters of all ages as well as the parents and grandparents. 113 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES.

990540 But I do believe that if we work together, if we find some new ways of working together, perhaps we can find some economical way to use what additional money we can find to provide better services in the schools. And I would propose a panel, a blue-ribbon panel, of three people appointed at the executive level from the School District and three people appointed by the Board of Trustees of the Free Library at an executive level to come together and prepare a detailed report of what are the collaborative programs that can be developed. And I believe that everything should be on the table in this collaborative approach and this blue-ribbon panel. Everything from, sure, opening our libraries more on the -- during the days, opening them on the weekends. But also some other things. Perhaps exploring what York, Pennsylvania has done. It's a different program, it's a way where the public library in York contracts with the school library to provide school library programs in elementary schools. Similar things are done in Reno, Nevada and New Orleans, Louisiana. And I think a blue-ribbon 114 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 panel can look at things across the board and find ways that, with additional money, services can be provided to make sure that youngsters in our schools have library service. Because the public library in and of itself cannot do it. The public library is there to reach everybody, to have a broad range of resources for everyone the community. The truth of the matter is that good libraries cost good money. There is no way to get around that, but this focus should be of this panel of how we can effectively and efficiently come up with the best model to use to provide school library services in Philadelphia. Perhaps maybe not the model that's been used before, perhaps not any model that any city or any community has seen, but I believe that a panel working together, we can find the ways that the Free Library and the School District can work together to provide the best possible library services for the children of Philadelphia. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Madam Chair, is it okay if I make a -- 115 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540

Sure.

Thank you. Certainly this is excellent testimony and just the kind of -- just what we were looking for, some solutions to deal with our issues. And certainly may I ask the superintendent if he is willing to engage in such a blue-ribbon panel with three members from the School District, and as Mr. Shelkrot offered, three members from the Board of Trustees of the Free Library?

Yeah, appointed by the Board, yeah.

Appointed by the Board? SUPT. HORNBECK: Madam Chair, we would be delighted to participate in that. The Philadelphia Free Library has been a great partner all these years, and we would look forward to finding even additional creative solutions, many like the ones that Mr. Shelkrot points to.

Thank you.

In addition, we would offer a member of the City Council Education Committee to also serve on the panel. 116 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540

Great.

Okay, thank you for your testimony. Councilman DiCicco?

Thank you, Madam Chair. And good afternoon, Mr. Shelkrot. I just have two questions. And if you don't have the answers today, I would appreciate it if you would make the information available to the chair of this committee. Your testimony indicates that of the approximately 54 libraries, there are only a few of them that are open in the mornings. How many of them are not open in the morning?

No, every one of our libraries are open in the mornings. Our branches, our 49 branches, are only open two mornings a week.

Of the 49 branches, then how many are not open?

Well, all 49 are open 2 mornings a week.

Okay, two mornings. So then the rest of the week, they're 117 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 not open. And what hours are they open now?

I'm sorry?

What hours are they open for the two days a week?

On those two -- well, let me clarify. What we have is a staggered schedule. There are many people who say, Look, we can't get to the library during the daytime, we come in the evening. So we have our branches scheduled in a way that two mornings a week, they're open from either 9 to 5 or 10 to 6, depending on the needs of the community. And the other 3 days a week, they're open from noon or 1 o'clock to 8 or 9 o'clock in the evening, depending on the needs of the community.

Okay. Two things I need you to answer and if you could do it in writing is, what would the cost be if we were to entertain keeping the libraries open on Sundays, branches whatever?

Okay.

And what would be the costs involved for all of the libraries to be open in the mornings? 118 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540

Okay, I don't have that with me, but I would be happy to put it together.

Yeah, all week, for five days a week.

Five days a week.

Okay, thank you.

The next person to testify will be Mary Jane Zimmerman.

Thank you. Good afternoon. And thank you for asking me to testify. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?

Yes.

I've been sitting here for quite a while. I represent the Association of Philadelphia School Librarians. I've been president of that association for four years now, the end of my second term. And I've been with the School District of Philadelphia since 1987. I have worked in an elementary school -- I was at George Washington Elementary School at Fifth and Federal for five years before coming to my present position in 1992 as a demonstration library at William Penn High School in North Philadelphia. Before that, Mr. Shelkrot may recall, I worked for 119 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 the Free Library for ten years, and I ended my career at Passyunk branch library. First of all, I have some serious differences of opinion with both my former boss and my present one, which I'd like to address at this time. First of all, I would like to address the idea that the implication that in opening the school -- these branches of the library on given hours would solve our problem. My last position, as I said, was a branch librarian and children's librarian at the Passyunk branch, at 20th and Shunk. And as the librarian in charge of children's services, I was given a list of schools in our service area for which I was responsible. These included two large elementary schools, two parochial schools, and a small private school adjacent to the branch. Given the number of schools and children, any meaningful regular class visit would have been impossible, and the branch collection inadequate. And although the library was packed with children in the afternoons, the afternoons could not make up for what should have been an active school library program. 120 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. , three days a week, as Mr. m. on Monday and Wednesday evenings. But these evening hours, even the Saturday and Sunday hours that you discussed, would serve only those children whose parents could, would, and saw the value of bringing them to the library. Although I made every effort to contact teachers to clarify assignments and coordinate our efforts, my work could not possibly make up for schools which lacked a quality, in-house library program with a trained professional. And for the School District to imply, even indirectly, that a school can cut its librarian and/or library because of the availability of a branch library in its vicinity is short-sighted and, in my opinion, abdicates the school's responsibility to fulfill one of the main thrusts of Mr. Hornbeck's Children Achieving plan. I'd like to quote to you from the "Cross Cutting Competencies" section of the District's curriculum's framework, and this is part of my testimony, which you have. 121 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Students who are competent in problem-solving will: 1. Identify concrete issues and abstract ideas and recognize that there are resources available to explain these issues and ideas. 2. Make decisions based on information, data, and/or research collected. 3. Collect, review, summarize, and organize data from a variety of contexts. 4. Analyze and select appropriate data that expands knowledge and meaning. 5. Apply and represent data appropriately. 6. Compare and contrast information and knowledge. 7. Plan probable strategies for solving an identified problem, device a plan to the problem, and evaluate the data selected and reexamine and collect more data if necessary. I have no idea how one incorporates this set of competencies into the total curriculum without having a well-funded school library program in place, staffed by a professional 122 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 librarian who can work along with the classroom teacher together to integrate the research process into the very fabric of the teaching and learning community. There's -- a phrase that Mr. Hornbeck used was that this is the inequity of the month. This is a particular sticking point with me. As I said to you, I came to the School District in 1987.

I've always been a member of the Association of Philadelphia School Librarians, which is a professional association that goes back over years. 14 I was very -- I became really, really 15 active in it when the program started to 16 deteriorate. At that time, since we did not feel 17 that the District, you know, or the Association 18 really was addressing the problem, a group of us 19 what were members of the Association formed an ad 20 hoc committee. We got the attention of the media 21 at that time, we talked to School Board members. 22 It didn't take off, the program had not 23 deteriorated enough. 24 I was elected President of the 25 Association of Philadelphia School Librarians. 123 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 And on many occasions, I have spoken to the School Board, and on many occasions, I have detailed how local decision-making has been a disaster for this research-based program. In fact, we have provided them with the APSL report, which details over and over again the research that shows that not classroom libraries, not classroom collections, not small learning communities, but a professional school library program staffed with professionals and with adequate clerical staff are key to improving student achievement. In spite of this, this is left up to local decision-making. And although in many cases, there are hard choices, sometimes the choices are not wisely done. And the implication becomes that this is not important. This is mandated, that is mandated. This is nice, but you can cut it if you want to. And after a while, the institutional memory of a school, of an elementary school, is not very long. Once the school -- once the library is gone, people don't remember what they had. There's a saying that you don't know what you don't know. And you can't remember or have nostalgia for something that you never had. 124 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 When I was at the elementary school that I talked about, I replaced a librarian who had been there for years, and there was a 5 full-fledged library program in place. I was 6 there for five years, and I expanded this program, 7 including a research-based program starting with 8 the 2nd grade. When I left, unfortunately, the 9 program was cut. Now there is no library program 10 there, and nobody at George Washington Elementary 11 School probably remembers what it was like. 12 On the high school level, I know only 13 too well what the impact of the lack of school 14 programs on the elementary program has once the 15 kids reach the high school level. When they 16 haven't been taught the research process, when 17 they haven't had a school library which is staffed with materials of all reading levels, they reach high school with no understanding or appreciation of what a wide variety of literature can do for them, and they know nothing about the research process, and we have to start from scratch. I can no longer assume that 9th-graders even know how the fiction books are organized. And the public library cannot take the place of this. 125 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 No, this is not the inequity of the month. This is something that has been happening over a period of approximately ten years. And finally, it has gotten so bad that it has gotten the attention of the media. Classroom collections -- sometimes it would be wonderful if we could have both. But in fact, the funding of classroom collections can take away from a well-funded library because each classroom teacher assumes that this nice little collection will suffice. As other people have addressed, children need to choose from a wide variety of materials, and they don't just need story books; they need to have a wide variety of materials on a wide variety of reading levels, and they need to be taught the research process by a professional teacher-librarian. I personally feel that the 100 Book Challenge is much better met by funding the school library.

In fact, unfortunately, although APSL and myself have addressed the Board over the years, and we have, as Mr. Alston mentioned, had an ongoing dialogue every year, more and more cuts 126 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 are made to the point where we have lost 110 professional library positions that we once had. If it had been funded adequately all along, if more proper use had been made with the funds that we have, our libraries would not have declined to the point that they have. I think we need to make better use of the funds that we have now and provide a mandate for this very important program. I could go on for a long time, but I --

Thank you, thank you. And we have a lot of folks who want to testify. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Thank you very much. Next is Carol Heinsdorf. Are you Carol Heinsdorf?

Yes, I am.

Thank you.

Excuse me, please, but I think Debra Gniewek has been --

She has been here forever, and her testimony's absolutely excellent.

Do we want to hear from 127 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 her first? May I suggest -- I will --

Thank you, thank you.

I will yield my chair.

Thank you. I'm Debra Gniewek, the Activity Manager for Library Programs and Services for the School District. And I'd really like to thank City Council for looking into something that I feel has been neglected for years and years and is really criminal, it's criminal. I have this written testimony and it's in the form of answering the questions that Council originally asked the District. But I really have to tell a story that happened today. I'm a storyteller, like most high librarians are, and it speaks to me about why this has to be a mandate and why it can't a part of local decision-making. I went with Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, who's a reporter from a national newspaper, Education Week, which is the most widely read education newspaper in the country. And we visited two libraries. And at one library, the principal did make the decision to close the 128 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 library. I don't agree with the decision, but I respect him for doing it because he's the only principal in the District that said, These books will not do for these children. And he's right. I would have preferred that he build up the central collection, because we have a method in the Library Power schools of rotating classroom collections, and that way, they're inventory- controlled. They get to all the classrooms, but the children also have the choice of coming to the central library. So we really immerse the children in books at every single reading level. And where Mr. Gill made his point about classroom collections, he really hasn't seen the Library Power Model in action. And as Steven Krashen's research says, Children do three times as much reading when there is a central collection with professional librarian as opposed to just classroom collections. But what happened at this school, the second school, where the principal has a library but no staffing, there has been no money going to the library at all. And she was very, very proud 129 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 of what they had been doing. She said, We get to do research in here. The teachers bring the classes in and they do research, and they really do a wonderful job. And I went to the shelves and within two minutes, I went to the collective biography section and I looked at the books on inventors, and there were seven books, and the copyright was 1955, 1960, and 1963. Two of the books had three copies each. There was not one African-American inventor in those books. That is not acceptable. This is not a frill. How can we have a library for these children to do research and they're going in there, and they are told that this is what's going on in the world. That might have been the propaganda of the 1960s, but it's something that we know is not true. I have more show-and-tell. This is from a library that's improved lately, and they had a celebration last night, and the librarian gave me this book, You Will Go to the Moon. And on the first page, it tells the children about how man hasn't been to the moon yet --"man" hasn't been to moon yet, but one day, he will be. 130 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 This is about how families live and the way families live is, Well, all families are all white, there's a mom and there's a dad, there's two children. Mom stays home and cares for the children and dad goes out and earns a living. Colonial Life in America has an illustration of happy slaves working on the plantation. This is in every elementary school library that's not Library Power. On the after the illustration, it talks about the life of the slaves. They had their own cabin. In some cases, there was a school. No value judgments are put on this, and this is what our children are expected to do research in. I can go on and on. This is about how fun it is to be an American while it puts down every other culture in the world. It was written during the Cold War. This is one about careers. We're a district that has a really strong career program.

And this is one that I found in the elementary school about airline stewardesses. It has a picture of Vice President Nixon getting off the plane, greeting the stewardesses. The end of the 131 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 book has the great finale for the stewardess. Even though she has to retire when she gets married worried, isn't it worth it? This is not a frill, this is not something that we say, Oh, we have to rob Peter to pay Paul for. This is something that is absolutely essential for our children. And I don't know how many more times we have to do this research to say -- Keith Curry Lance did it in 1993. And what he said was, overall expenditures on students do not make a difference. But if you gear that money to the library, school libraries expenditures, professional staffing assisted by clerical assistants have the most impact on student achievement and reading scores. His research was repeated by Steven Krashen in 1993, who looked at years of reading research and 19 said that school libraries make the biggest 20 difference. Krashen repeated it again in 1997. Now Keith Curry Lance did the research in Pennsylvania, and he hasn't published it yet. But the state librarian called me yesterday and told me that the data is stronger than ever that if you have a library program, with open access 132 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 for the children, if you have resources, if you have a professional librarian and clerical assistants, if that librarian works with the teachers and works with the students, then those student have the highest scores of any students in the state on the PSSAs in reading. The research has been done on an international level, over 32 countries. ) did research and found out that by having a strong library program, you can make up the difference between rich and poor nations. And then locally, we did it again. We compared our Library Power schools to the non-Library Power schools, and the children in the Library Power schools scored higher on the reading portion of the Stanford 9 Achievement. Not only that, but they found that Library Power benefited high-poverty children more than anyone. It really makes up the difference, the gap between the rich and the poor. And this is what we're looking for. I have answers to the questions and I'd be happy to, but I guess my plea is, I'm really begging you to take the surplus from the city and earmark it for the libraries. And I'll tell you 133 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 that if it's not earmarked for the library, in 80 percent of the cases, it won't get there because the principals don't have a vision of what the school library can be, they don't know what it can be, they've never seen it. Their experience of the school library is their own experience from when they were school children 30 years ago and they were being educated to work on an assembly line. Now we're teaching children how to think and how to research, and the most important skill is the skill that the librarian teaches them, which is the skill of how to find information, how to evaluate it, and how to use it. So most of our principals don't have a vision. And I said to Kathleen Manzo Kennedy, when we say these books on the shelves and the principal saying that this is a wonderful program, I said, I could give her $10 million and she would not spend it on the library, she would not choose to do that. So I really am begging you to earmark those funds for our school libraries for the sake 134 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 of our children. It really, really does make a difference, I've seen it. I also want to invite you to visit the Library Power schools and see it, because it's not just the numbers; if you can see the looks on the faces of these children, you would know that it works. Thank you. )

Okay, thank you. Thank you.

May I say that your testimony was as good as the written documentation. And let me say for the -- we would like to, if the Chair will agree, to make the entire testimony a part of the record. And there are five questions here that are questions and answers. 1. How many schools have library facilities in their building? 2. Are there schools that provide for the use of library facilities outside their building? And all these questions are answered. 135 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 3. How is the determination made regarding whether a school will have library facilities? Who makes those decisions? 4. How much money is allocated in the School District budget for the operation of library facilities? How much for capital improvements in library facilities? And these are all really, really important questions on this whole issue. 5. For those schools that do have libraries, are textbooks made available to the children for their use when there is a shortage of books in the classroom. Important questions. So for anyone certainly who would like a copy of this, the committee would certainly make it available, and we certainly, if the Chair agrees, will make this entire testimony a part of the record.

Thank you. I guess there are two things that I just found out yesterday that I just wanted to add to my testimony. What I found out by getting the figures from New York is that we are now the 136 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 lowest funded per-pupil library program in the nation. We're the lowest. And the next thing that I found out from the Keith Curry Lance research is, everybody's always saying that technology -- there's no proof that technology works. Well, the new Lance research says that if you put networked computers in the library, it does have a positive effect on student achievement. And yet, we've had no major initiative to put the network computers in the libraries. So I just wanted to add those two things 'cause those are pieces of research that I just learned yesterday.

I don't have any records here, but I would like to know if either the Chair or the former Chair knows, what does the public school system spend for libraries? What is their investment in it in dollar terms?

There is nothing allotted. The decision is made by individual principals. So currently, we have a figure of $5.97. That makes us the lowest in the nation, except we believe that that figure is very high 137 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 because we had 60 non-reporting schools and we believe, as we get more information -- originally we had 65 -- the non-reporting schools are spending nothing. So even though we have a figure that's the lowest in the nation, we believe it's even lower than that because of the non-reporting schools.

You mean there is no 11 central mandate?

There's no central mandate. And the national average is now $36 a child, 1997 to 1998 data.

It only gets you to about three innings of a ball game.

I mean, we would be thrilled with the national average. We don't even approach it.

Do you have any idea what the national average is?

The national average is about $28 per student in elementary schools and about $43 per students in high schools. So we say about $36 per student. And what they're saying 138 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 nationally is, this isn't enough. And it isn't enough, but look where we are.

Where?

We're the lowest -- we're $5 --

We're nowhere.

We're nowhere. I mean, where we are is books about inventors from 1955.

Even I'll be young if I go by the years in those books, right? (Laughter.)

Me too.

Yeah. All right, thank you very much. I -- I -- I don't think it's a secret we want to let out of the city. We have to correct the situation first before we can let any information go out about our library system. We never knew that. I've been in Council many years. I just always assumed that libraries were kept up to date, that they were useful to students, and that they gave the students the right point of view, or at least the options of the right points of view, you know, to 139 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 follow. But, apparently, if books are going to be 30, 40, 50 years old, it's not going to be very useful. It may be harmful.

They are damaging, very damaging to our students. And the other thing that the research showed is that you really need a professional and a clerical person in there to really give the students the instruction that they need. They really need to learn that research process. They can't memorize all the facts they need to know for the 21st century. But if they learn how to use information and evaluate it, then they're set. They really are.

Mr. Epstein, I have to address you. You're a man of words. How can you tolerate such a situation? You don't have to answer that but I'd like you to, I'd like you to. I'd like to understand what is the philosophy that -- is it just the tightness of the dollar? (William Epstein comes forward.)

I am William Epstein, Director of Government Relations. 140 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540

Can you hold on just a second.

Sure.

I need to leave. And as Chair of this committee, Councilwoman Blackwell will proceed. I have a meeting outside of City Hall that's already been scheduled, and I have to -- actually, I should have been there at 5. But I just want to personally thank everyone for coming today to testify about this important issue. And I, like Councilman Cohen, never really realized that the libraries are so outdated. I do have a daughter at a school that doesn't have a library, but we use Northwest Regional and we buy books and those kind of things. So I just want to personally thank everyone for coming. The hearing will continue. Councilwoman Blackwell is going to Chair it. Thank you.

Thanks, Donna. Mr. Epstein?

Thank you, Councilman. 141 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 I'm William Epstein, Director of Government Relations for the School District. I think the superintendent, Councilman, responded fairly thoroughly to the dilemma that we face in this regard, that we do not have adequate resources to do the many things that we need to do to make our children whole. And lack of libraries and librarians is one of them.

Well, I just wondered how that --

I wouldn't want anyone to walk out of this room under the impression that the superintendent, the people that work for him, the teachers in our system, the administrators are at all comfortable with the fact that books of that nature are in our libraries. I'm not certain why we don't take books like that -- and not being a librarian, I can't answer this question, but why we don't -- I know if I had any books like that in my office, they'd be in the trash bin, because they certainly don't do my children any good or your children any good.

Well, that's why I made the remark about the possible harm that they 142 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 do.

They do. And when --

I'm very concerned. Frankly, we worried about school size, we worried about safety, we worried about the administration of drugs. Councilwoman Blackwell kept us busy with a whole group of issues. The one issue we fought for so long, we never had to raise because we felt very comfortable that the libraries would be outstanding in the schools. And --

They're among the worst in the nation, they really are. And the reason that these books are still on the shelves is that when I go into a library that doesn't have a librarian and I suggest to the principal that they get rid of 95 percent of the collection, which is what I say they refuse, because they believe that something is better than nothing, and I totally disagree. And there are some teachers in the District who believe that something is better than nothing, too. I believe that the books are damaging and that they should not be there. The other thing is that the librarians 143 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 are no longer given time to do an inventory to weed the books. And they always do have to get the principal's permission to weed them. And, again, the principal is not a professional about this and very often assumes that something's better than nothing.

Thank you, Mr. Epstein.

If I could suggest. I very seriously doubt whether there's a teacher in the Philadelphia school system using books like that -- of the kind that Debra cited.

These people think there are.

And if there are teachers, we need to have an internal discussion about it to resolve that issue because that is not the standard that the School District aspires to.

That's what I'm saying.

How do we know that?

Excuse me? Our standards in key subjects are very clearly laid out, and I doubt that it includes anything of the nature that Miss Gniewek has cited here. 144 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 So, again, I'm not the expert in the area here and I'm not -- certainly not a librarian, you know that. And I'm not a teacher, either, but I'd be shocked if any of the teachers in the School District were using any of the books that Miss Gniewek cited.

The children are using them.

But that's --

As I said, Mr. Willingham is the only principal that said that that is not acceptable.

If they're on the shelf, I don't doubt that a child might pull them off, but I'm sorry, you said teachers were using these books, and I --

Well, I mean, I went to a school where the reading teacher said that something is better than nothing and it's better for them to have something to read rather than nothing.

I agree with you that that's not true.

Mr. Epstein, I 145 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 would dare to say that this hearing isn't over yet. So if you listen, we have other people who may shed a little light on this as well. Thank you. Excellent testimony. (Applause.)

Thank you, thank you. All right. Please identify yourself for the record and continue.

My name is Carol Heinsdorf. That's spelled H-E-I-N-S-D-O-R-F as in Frank. Councilwoman Blackwell and committee members, I'm hoping this is as short as the Ghettysburg Address, so please pay attention. While a member of Mayor-elect John Street's Education Summit Resource Team, I explained to my team how the Library Power tenets of certified teacher-librarians, open access, flexible scheduling, teacher collaboration, quality, up-to-date book collections, and attractive facilities supported effective academic programming for both teachers and students. After my emotional outpour, I was 146 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 assured by the co-chair of this summit, Marge Dugan that my team members already understood and supported those school library tenets. Miss Dugan's comments lead me to believe that you, the City Council Committee on Education members, also understand and support these Library Power tenets, which are increase proven to increase academic performance. Pat Mazzuca, the principal of Clemente Middle School in North Philadelphia, supports Library Power, and that's where I am the school librarian. We have a dynamic school library program serving 1,000 students a week. While in the former East Berlin last June on a school exchange, I witnessed the high level of academic performance expected of students. Only 10 percent of the schools in Germany have school libraries, and the library in school we visit was tiny, staffed by a clerk, and usually closed. My home stay's son said it didn't really matter because he had so much school work to do that he didn't have time to read. The glaring cultural difference that I observed was that the level of performance was 147 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 high because students were taught to perform. German students are taught to do; however, they are not taught to think. Teaching students to think, to identify the question, and know how to find the answer to it is culturally a very American activity. There is no better place to teach our children to identify a question, synthesize information, and find the answer for themselves than in a good school library while they are young and a captive audience. The public school children of the City of Philadelphia deserve your support of good school libraries. Not in my written testimony is a practical suggestion, because I've heard you want suggestions. When the budget sheets are handed out in the schools each year in March, if you look at where the librarian is on there in an elementary school, the librarian comes under the principal and before a counselor. In the middle school where I am, there is the principal, the assistant principal, the librarian, and then the counselor. Several years ago, all of the teaching positions -- art, music, whatever -- were 148 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 integrated and made one with the classroom teacher. The librarians were never integrated. When there is limited funding in a building, a responsible principal is going to look at where they can make the biggest single cut with the least effect, and the librarian is right up there. That's why the certified professional librarians are let go first, because that's where the principal can save the most amount of money. Now, I say all that needs to be done -- I don't know how much work it would take -- is to take that librarian out of that position on that individual school budget and integrate it with a classroom teacher. They will be cheaper to hire. It's just a suggestion. A negotiating point was asked for earlier -- this also is not in my testimony. But when we can have our children read and think and synthesize information, they are going to be kept off the welfare rolls, which are shorter all the time, I understand. But if Philadelphia can keep its children literate, what better reason could you have in Harrisburg for funding school libraries? It's good for the City, which takes 149 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 less money from the State.

Common sense. Thank you for your concern.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Karen Talarico? Please identify yourself for the record and make your testimony.

Yes. " I'm Karen Talarico and I'm the Executive Director of the Friends of the Free Library. And I'm here today to address the issue of having the Free Library provide library services to the City schools. The Friends are staunch supporters of libraries and literacy, especially where children are concerned. For many years, the Friends have organized the Read Together Coalition, which every year sponsors among its programs "Love Is Reading Together Week," a program which many of the City Councilmembers have participated in. The Friends think the Free Library does a terrific library in the area of providing 150 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 library services for children. And many of those programs were already detailed by Elliot Shelkrot when he testified so I won't go into them again here. And I think that if you visited one of the renovated branch libraries and seen one of the children's departments, you know what a wonderful place they are. They have computers in them, they have a very nice collection of books geared toward children, and they're staffed by a children's librarian. But the Friends believe that the Free Library should offer services to the entire community, and we think that the library does that admirably. Our concern is that the resources of the library will be spread just a little too thin if the library is given the mandate to furnish the library programming for City school students. Unless those programs are fully funded and staffed, other aspects of library service may suffer. We're worried about what's going to happen to the segments of the community that the library has to serve in addition to the children, to the preschoolers who come for story hour, to 151 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 the senior citizens who rely on the library as a place to gather and find reading material in a peaceful setting, to job seekers who need the resources of the library to help them find work, and to scholars who use the resources to help them research. There are those who feel that the library isn't open enough hours and doesn't have enough staff to fully serve their communities right now. What will happen to the oldest and youngest segments of our library-users if the libraries and librarians must focus more time and energy on our school students? You know, right after the school year began this year, I received a phone call from a 5th-grade teacher who told me that his classroom had no library and his school had no library. He knew that the Friends were engaged in the practice of collecting used books and reselling them and distributing them, and he wondered if I could help him out well. Well, of course, I was happy to help out. And I had the staff of the bookstore put together five cartons of books for this teacher. 152 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 But when I looked at the books, I felt really bad sending them to this teacher. Those books were really well-worn, they were well-read, they were underlined. We had to guess at whether they were appropriate for the grade level of the children because none of us are professionals on that level. But I called him up and he came down and he picked up those five cartons, and he was really thrilled. He told me that a used book is better than no book -- something that I think you've heard before this afternoon. But I still feel bad about sending those used books to the kid. And I continue to get calls because now the word is spreading that the Friends can supply books to the schools that don't have libraries and don't have classroom libraries. We're happy to try to accommodate those requests, but I feel personally that the kids deserve new, up-to-date books in their school libraries. And I think they need to have books for research, enrichment, and leisure reading right in their own schools, if not in their classrooms. 153 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 So in closing, I would urge you not to shortchange the children of our city.

Provide the libraries in their schools, staff them with a teacher-librarian who can teach how to use the library as part of their curriculum. And that will allow the Free Library to continue to provide services for all members of the community, young and old alike. Thank you for your time. )

Thank you very much. I now have two of my friends from West Philadelphia -- the Director of the West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, Fran Aulston, and certainly to the right of her is Janet Dubinsky, President of Garden Court Civic Association. Thank you, ladies. Thank you for your patience. Please introduce yourselves for the record and begin your testimony.

I'm Frances Aulston, F-R-A-N-C-E-S, A-U-L-S-T-O-N, Director of the West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and the Paul Robeson House. Good afternoon -- or good evening 154 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 now. Madam Chair, Councilmembers, parents, educators, and students if there are any left, and members of the general public, on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of children who have benefited from a substantial educational process and because of their determination and because of advocates like you who are represented here today, and on behalf of the board members, parents, and children of the West Philadelphia Culture Alliance and the Paul Robeson House and Institute of Civic Responsibility, thank you for the opportunity to address this afternoon the importance of library programs. As a former librarian with the Philadelphia Free Library for the last five years of my library career and a library assistant for of my 31 years in library service, I learned 20 the importance of strong supportive library 21 programs. Those years offered me an opportunity 22 to see children cram into the library after school 23 hours with only standing room, children eager to 24 learn. 25 On a personal note, I can appreciate 155 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 the value of open access to library materials. For as a child growing up in Richmond, Virginia, I experienced blatant racism in the schools and public libraries. As a black child -- we were called "colored" at that time -- the only library that I had access to was the public library, 35 blocks away from my home. I, as well as many black children, walked 30 blocks and more to borrow books -- only to be embarrassed by the librarian telling us that we were not allowed to touch books in the for-whites-only section of the library. Nevertheless, with the many limitations affirmed by racism and the limitations in the selection process of substantial reading materials, we as black children persevered and achieved academically. That was fifty years ago and not much has changed, as we listened today, when we look at the negative message we are sending our children by closing libraries, reducing professional library staff and resources. I believe that we can all agree that the fundamental reason that our children's academic success is that the family or parents are 156 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 involved with their educational process. Yes, libraries are important, a key tool for family involvement. It's the fundamental library structure where subject matter can be accessed through print and non-print materials. Because of the lack of commitment that some City and State officials demonstrate for full-service libraries and schools, many students have inadequate resources to receive their maximum potential in the educational process. Library facilities and strong library programs are an absolute crucial part of their educational experience. Having libraries included in the school facility enables students to complete homework assignments, to check out books to aid in their subject matter, and increases their reading ability. The library should be the main hub for learning, the public school library. It's important to note that other community settings are secondary support systems. Library instruction must first start in the public schools. The Free Library's mission, in part, is to supplement the curriculum. 157 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Once this resolution is passed -- and I have faith in God that you will pass it -- call on us who are on the main line, the front line, educators who have many positive solutions, as you've heard today. If you're interested in forming a task force, I would suggest that you add to Elliot Shelkrot's model, the blue-ribbon model, and include panels from the community, the leadership in the community, as well as parents on those panels. (Applause.)

It's also important to remember that within the school structure as an integral part of the learning team, the professional librarian should always be included to aid teachers in the location of the appropriate grade-level material for their students. This is essential in order to help student locate books to aid in the research design that students must now have in the Philadelphia public schools. Full-time librarians are also essential to aid the administration to quickly locate educational materials and educational-related materials. Librarians are also essential to 158 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 strengthen their schools' collection and resources with the latest innovations in both print and non-print forms. The library is also a different learning environment. As you heard the students say today, it affords a quiet, clean and safe -- now the children told us this today place -- that they might have to read. Also, it's a place where they may select a book that they would not ordinarily share information with their parents. The library setting allows students to seek information that they do not want to talk to adults about but that they may be able to discuss with a professional librarian. The library facility is conducive for textbook reading, to do research, to read for pleasure. And all of the things are enhanced by quality library programs and settings. Even if additional funding is received through Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell's resolution, because of the bureaucracy and Councilman Kenney's remarks today, it will take ten years, another generation, before a student can graduate with adequate skills for a successful 159 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 and productive adult life. On behalf of our children, I wholeheartedly request Council's immediate consideration to support this resolution to hold hearings to investigate the Board of Education providing library facilities for all students within the public schools. I thank you, in the absence of Madam Chair and Councilmembers, for the opportunity of your time and consideration to address you this afternoon. Thank you.

Thank you very, very much thank you. (Applause.)

Miss Dubinsky.

Hi. My name is a Janet Dubinsky. I am President of Garden Court Community Association and also the Education Chair. ), for coming today to support us. And she's done a spectacular job with what we have. ) 160 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Councilman Cohen, for your perusal -- Councilwoman Blackwell has already seen the library. This is an instant tour of the school library. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these are 9,000 words. Diane was very much on the mark. Last week in the school library, I pulled out off the shelf at random: Let's Go to Africa, in which it states that the Union of the Society Africa is run by people whose grandparents came from England and Holland. A little out of date. On the shelf last week. We have people teaching languages in the Republic of the Congo. No one in the village owns shoes. We have people in grass huts because that is the way they live. I am not African- American, obviously, but this doesn't make me feel any better as a member of the human race. We have here a music book first published in 1896. This was weeded from the Lee School library only early in 1999. The last print date on it, I believe, is 1930. Some of you may be familiar with the author Jacqueline Suzanne. 161 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 This is a book that evidently belonged to her mother, who was a music teacher at Lee School. Current? I think not. Diane mentioned about heroes that were relevant to our current curricula, that there were no African-Americans mentioned. " Birthdays of Freedom -- no African-Americans. From early man to July 4, 1976, has anything happened since then? Yeah, I think so. Role models. Our school is at least 80 percent African-American, percent Asian. I'm 14 sure he's a very famous man, I'm sure most of our 15 students eat his food. This is a biography of Ray 16 Kroc who, in one place, states that -- this will 17 be interesting. As a child, Ray did enjoy 18 reading. After 10th grade, Ray quit school. Well 19 that might have been all right for Ray, but it's 20 not all right for our kids now to get ideas like this in their heads. Play Time in Africa, which is, once again, a tour with the happy natives. And one of our real winners -- the picture story, as Diane said, of a colonial 162 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 plantation. It's equipped with all the slave quarters and the happy, smiling slaves and everything else you could imagine. These books, except for the one that was only pulled last week, have been pulled within the last six months. These were current books in what you see is left of Lee School's library. I have a great fondness for Lee School. It's a K-through-8 school and I went there K through 8. I'm also a graduate of West Philly High and I still live and work in the community in which I was born. These books, these six books and those nine pictures, which anyone is free to look at afterward if they'd like to, are worth 15,000 words so I'll just cut down to the last few. These will, hopefully, say more to you than I could about the state of this school library, which exists today as not even a skeleton of its former self. I say "self" because to many of us, a library is, or should be hopefully, a living, interactive entity. Lee School, including library, has no 25 current access to the Internet as well as no 163 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 computers in the library to enable children to do research as well as to read for pure enjoyment. They have no books to take home. A community should be able to support and encourage a school library on a volunteer basis, not the necessity to build one from one from scratch. We shouldn't have to choose between a music teacher, who -- by the way, the music teacher at Lee School asked me to mention that the music teacher needs some recorders because we have no instruments either. We have a music teacher but no instruments. What we have is a K-through-8 1,000-student school, with no functioning library or librarian.

These children feed directly into the high school. We are a part of the West Philadelphia Cluster. West Philadelphia High School is right across the street from us. These kids are going to high school without having used a school library in years if at all, if ever. Walnut West one of our closer libraries, and as some of you may know, Walnut West has been greatly marginalized -- its hours, its space, and its operating facilities. And it's 164 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 certainly not accessible to everyone. We have one Lee parent who is herself a Lee grad who mentioned to me and said very sadly that even if you could afford a laptop computer, it's not exactly something you take to bed, use a flashlight under the covers, and cuddle up with. They're very nice, they're very technological, it's wonderful, and we need them. But a book is something tangible that can belong to you and you alone. And a new one, as the lovely lady from Friends of the Free Library said, occasionally is a nice thing to have. It's yours. It builds a foundation. Bonding with books, as most of us have learned, is our own lifetime reward. We hope that we can give our children the same opportunity as we have had. How can they respect the printed word and learn to love it if they don't have access to it? And this is not a matter of self aggrandizement on our community Association's part, but we felt so strongly the desperate straits of Lee School's Library, which Councilwoman Blackwell has seen, and this is a 165 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 school at which Councilwoman Blackwell has also taught in her former career. We felt so strongly at our last board meeting that we voted 1,000 dollars seed money to Lee School's library, with hopes of matching it many times over through the community and its members and its businesspeople and individual contributions. This is only a start, this is not something we should have to do. We already have people volunteering their time. This should come from the State, the City, the School Board. This shouldn't be necessary for us to grovel for things and to beg for a better life for these kids. It's not a solution, what we've done, but it is hopefully a beginning. And with Council's help, with the State's help, with the School Board's help, we can build on what we are doing and hopefully turn this around because it has very little left to go in terms of going down. There is no other way but up. Thank you.

Thank you very much. (Applause.) 166 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540

Let me say that it is obviously very painful for me. I was so disappointed. I can see Miss Rodriguez's friendly face when I taught there, the librarian, and all that goes along with it. Elsie Hart knows those days. And when I walked in and when I asked whether or not the principal -- and when I asked Cheryl Hazzard if she had a librarian and her answer was no and then I toured the library, I knew why. Why could you waste a person when you don't even have books. So it's very, very disappointing when we approach a millennium and we are to move forward and yet we're moving back in many ways. And I certainly thank both of you Fran Aulston and Janet Dubinsky, and I thank Garden Court for caring enough to try to solicit volunteers and to do a collection to try to make a difference. Thank you all. You all you've been just great. And let me invite the other folks up who are here. Please come over to speak. And it's been a wonderful testimony, and I'm sorry that everyone who started is not here, but we're 167 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 going to continue to keep going. Identify yourself for the record, please.

Dee Phillips.

Dee Phillips. Of course, I know you. Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, Dee Phillips. And Francina Emery, Multicultural Resource Center. Please identify yourself for the record and make your testimony. Mr. Parker, you can sit down right there. Thank you.

Good evening Councilwoman Blackwell and Councilman Cohen. I am Dee Phillips. That's P-H-I-L-L-I-P-S. I'm Vice President of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and Special Assistant to the President. I am honored to bring you greetings from our President, Ted Kirsch, who is presently out of the country. He asked me to offer testimony on behalf of PFT with regard to the current status of libraries and librarians in the School District and Council Resolution No. 990540. However, because the hour is late and 168 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 because a lot of what is in my testimony has already been stated, I'd just like to summarize what is here, and you have the full text for the record.

We'll make it a part of the record.

Thank you. We do applaud this initiative to investigate library facilities and staffing in the School District. And it is clear that a school library staffed by a professional librarian, with appropriate funding for instruction and materials and technology resources, is an invitation to learning. It sends a clear message to our students that indeed, they are as important as we say they are. Anything less than that sends the wrong message. And, unfortunately, the facts and the reality do send the wrong message. And you've heard this data today, but it just bears repeating that out of 188 elementary schools, 110 are without full-time certified professional librarians. And, in fact, there are schools where the library is closed all or for a part of the week. There are schools where 169 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 libraries have been completely dismantled. And there are about 55 schools where the library is entirely without professional staff or that are staffed by volunteers or there is staff pulled from their other duties. And I ask you to imagine the following scene. Your doctor has told you that you are in need of heart bypass surgery. However, due to the lack of funding, instead of a fully qualified anesthesiologist, a wonderful volunteer will administer the anesthesia, would you allow this to happen? I don't think so. So how, then, are we allowing some of our children to receive total library services from volunteers and others to receive no library services at all? And to exacerbate the situation, the Pennsylvania School Code no longer mandates a librarian in every secondary school. As a result, here in Philadelphia, principals are beginning to cut the secondary-school librarian positions. Central East Middle School, right now, does not have a librarian. George Washington High School, one of the largest comprehensive high schools in the District, is slated to become the first high 170 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 school in the nation -- I repeat that, in the nation -- without a certified school librarian. The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers believe that a quality library with a full-time, properly certified and qualified librarian should be the center of the instructional program of the school. A certified professional school librarian can provide the expertise necessary to ensure that that happens. Librarians are not simply custodians of books but are those whose certification and training have given them the knowledge and skills to develop plans and processes for assisting children in learning to communicate and how to access information. They provide information and the use of technology that support the mission, goals, and objectives of the school and enrich the student learning environment. A school library is neither a convenience, nor a luxury. It is essential to the growth of young minds. Our students deserve school libraries that contain appropriate -- that means up-to-date -- collection of books, materials, and other 171 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 resources. And libraries can provide greater access for students, staff, and parents to the Internet, instruction of databases, and a host of other electronic resources. The Free Library of Philadelphia is one of our great community resources, but it cannot take the place of a school library, and we cannot accept the idea that one can replace the other. Unfortunately, while we are demanding more and more from educators and students, we are giving them less and less support. If we expect our students to meet higher standards, we have to give them opportunities to do so. It is clear that we need more to achieve and sustain better academic progress. Education has become the focus of national, State, and local government initiatives. Therefore, we have a rare opportunity to effect significant and lasting improvement in our schools.

You can build on this momentum by providing educators and students with the resources and funding necessary to accomplish what we all want for our children, and that is the opportunity to learn and achieve at the highest 172 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 level. Thank you for your kind attention.

Thank you Miss Phillips, thank you. (Applause.)

Miss Emery?

Good evening, Councilwoman Blackwell and other members who are present. My name is Francinia Emery, and I am grateful also for this opportunity to address some issues regarding the state of libraries in Philadelphia, and I'm not going to go into any detail because everything that I was going to say has been said. I am the Director of the Multicultural Resource Center in Philadelphia and, therefore, I get into schools a great deal, not only in Philadelphia but across the country. But in addition, I am probably one of the most recently appointed members of the Governor's Advisory Council on Libraries in Pennsylvania. And I have to concur with Councilman, I think it was McKenney (sic), who spoke about the way in which Philadelphia is viewed by the people on this Council as well as in other places in the 173 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 government and that -- I don't know why, I'm unfortunately the only member on the Council from this area, from anywhere in southeastern Pennsylvania and very often the lone voice for public school libraries, because most of the support goes for school libraries, public school libraries, because most of the support goes to the public libraries and not the school libraries, and certainly more to libraries in other than urban areas. The urban libraries in the schools are very much neglected, and so I'm there, I'm new, I'm learning, and I'm in the minority in a lot of ways. I only have to add a couple of things to what has been said already. One is that I really, really highly commend Debra Gniewek, who is the person now in charge of libraries in the School District, for her exemplary dedication and untiring work toward the improvement of all of our school libraries and especially her work towards the implementation of the Library Power Program in the few schools in which it exists in Philadelphia. I feel as if that's a mountain-top 174 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 experience for me when I go into Library Power schools, because in those schools, which are 4 percent of Philadelphia schools, they are fully 5 implementing Library Power, which is an exemplary, 6 cost-effective elementary school library program 7 where spaces have been refurbished to accommodate 8 appropriate books and technology which supports 9 all aspects of the curriculum frameworks and 10 where, with the guidance of an accessible professional librarian, teachers and kids become unmistakably proud, independent teachers and learners, communicators who are appreciative of their own cultures and of the cultures who are different from themselves. And from their extensive study of Library Power schools, Offenberg and Clark reported that Library Power schools scored higher on SAT-9 reading than comparable schools without that quality school program. They also concluded that Library Power may provide the most benefit in poverty schools. In addition, as a former principal and District teacher and principal in the School District of Philadelphia for 16, 17 years as the 175 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 principal alone, I feel that the librarian, the placement of a librarian in a school should not be left completely to the discretion of the school principals. It's extremely important that people realize the real power and importance of that librarian and that media specialist, which a librarian is, in the school. As the principal of the school where I was, which was a middle school, for the whole 11 years that I was a principal, my librarian and my 12 library was both physically and instructionally 13 the center, the hub of the school. And the 14 librarian, the consummate professional in our 15 school library, was a key member of my 16 administrative cabinet. I didn't know she'd be 17 sitting back there today. There she is, Elsie Hart, who was a really integral part of everything that happened in that school and certainly the prime supporter of the instructional program.

So I can personally testify to the extreme importance of having a qualified, certified librarian in a school. And, of course, I ditto everything that the other people have said here this afternoon, 176 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 and I feel that knowing that all of the research is showing that a quality school library program is the best predictor of academic success in a school, we cannot play around with this idea. We must fund full-time librarians and we must equip our librarians, our libraries, and our collections in our libraries with appropriate materials that will help our children to achieve optimum success. Thank you. )

Thank you very much. Rex Parker for State Representative Roebuck. (Mr. Parker comes forward.)

Please proceed, Mr. Parker.

I will keep the Chairperson's promise and not keep you long.

Thank you.

You said that the representative's statement will be read into the record. So I would just like to read the last and then give a few comments of my own. As I've 177 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 stayed here for these three or four hours and not really expecting to, it was totally unrehearsed, but it was very, very challenging and a very good idea. The Representative James Roebuck says, "It is my intent, as State Representative, to continue to fight for the students in our schools to ensure that one of the most valuable resources in our schools, public school libraries, are not front. I will continue to raise awareness of the value of the school libraries and the positive role they play in producing leaders and scholars for our nation. "In conclusion, I would like to commend the Education Committee for holding these hearings for the issue that is directly affecting our children and their immediate future, quality of life." Now, as I've sat here and I've listened, I'm the Representative's administrative aide, and I will take the message back to him to say that this is a very viable mission that everyone is on. And of the people that I've heard speak today -- Steven, Diane, and Elliot from 178 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 their different perspectives, I didn't get their last names, but they're the ones who offered a plan. And if that plan that they have presented in piece could come together, I think that we'd be well on our way, as if you do not plan, you're planning to fail. Thank you very much for letting me come before you, and I will relay the content of this meeting to the Representative.

Thank you very much and thank for your patience earlier today, and we know you were here for the earlier part of the committee, so you've been here all day, but we thank you. (Applause.)

To all who are left, we want you to know that we do have a prepared statement from State Representative Roebuck that will be made a part of the record with many details and it certainly gives us an overview of what's going on across the country as well as across Pennsylvania. Now I certainly want to ask you to come forward, please: Elsie, Mr. Wiesman, Lauren 179 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Douthit, and Janice Banks. Who else do we have left? I'll go through the list and if you are here, please come. These are my charter school people, you know I love my charter schools.

We love you. Is that a matter of record?

Thank you, thank you. And I promise when we have another hearing, you will be first. That's a promise. I know you've been here a long time, and we do thank you. I also have Delores Shaw, Sharon Fisher, Nancy Ribik, Sharon Avent, Maurice Okereke, Judy Weinberger, and Lillian Brown. So, please, we are ready to hear you, and I thank you so much for your patience. I promise you that, you know, we don't want to certainly hold up you scholars, and we appreciate your patience and we do love the work that you do and your commitment to children. Thank you very much. Elsie, why don't you begin. Identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony. 180 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540

Thank you very much for having us. My name is Elsie Hart E-L-S-I-E, H-A-R-T, and I am a working public school librarian. One thing I do want to state that was not -- that I do not include in my testimony is the fact that when Milton Shat was governor, he convened a State committee on libraries. From that, we had a full State hearing, and then we had a national committee on libraries, and I was a part of all of that, so it will give you an idea of how long I have been working and fighting for school libraries. Most of the benefits that came from that conference did go to the public library and school libraries. Although I fought all the time for school libraries, we received very few benefits from it.

Miss Hart, may I say that I guess I've known you for nearly 30 years, and you were fighting for libraries when I first met you.

Yes.

So we know 181 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 your commitment goes back.

Yes. Jannie and I taught in the same school at one time, at Tilden Middle School.

Yes.

Thank you for allowing me to speak to you about our school libraries. School libraries are in a state of crisis. Many administrators seem to have lost sight of the real reason that we have schools. Schools exist to educate children and should not be used to make money or to serve as a forerunner to a penal institution. Community assistants formerly assigned to the library at the Pickett School are now used to monitor bathrooms, keep children out of the hallways, and to break up fights. I no longer have a full-time or a part-time library assistant. At one time, I had what is known as two full-time LIMAs, and those are Library Instructional Materials Assistants. Teaching classes of students how to unlock the many treasures found in our storehouse of knowledge known as the IMC, which is an 182 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 instructional materials center, is my primary concern. The name change came about as we incorporated more than books. I also spend a great deal of time with small groups individualized instruction. Arriving early and staying late, as I do, still does not give me sufficient time to take care of the matter of clerical and other behind-the-scenes operations that must be done. That includes taking inventory, ordering supplies, books, and magazines, typing library cards, processing new books and other materials, repairing books, running the video for the school's closed-circuit program, taping for teachers when requested, and other related tasks. I keep a backlog of unfinished work, and my request for catchup time during the summer falls on deaf ears. Under the present budget process, principals now have the power to regulate school library finances. As a result, we no longer meet State standards. With our present enrollment of 782 students, I should be allotted $2,967 for the school year. 45 per child. However, I was limited to $2,000 as my 183 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 59 per child. Today, hardback books cost a minimum of $10 each. I had hoped to initiate the 100 Book Challenge this year, but I fell short by $500 to start with just one classroom. I do hope, ladies and gentlemen, you can help us find a source that will allow a more realistic approach to our financial problems than the one presently in place. Think what others in the outlying districts are doing for their students. Just think, with an adequate library staff and a proper funding how we could cut out many of the discipline problems plaguing our schools. Children would be so interested in their school work, they would not be taking the time to get into mischief. I have been asked why I do not retire and let someone else take over. My position would probably be eliminated, and I don't want that. This year, the home economics classes were eliminated, and our school had already lost the electrical shop, the wood shop, and the instrumental music teacher. I hear that instead, we are getting a truancy court to be housed right 184 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 in our building. You may be wondering why I have not mentioned technology. We do have a technology lab in our school. However, my computer has been down since last June, five months, and thus far, I've received nothing but promises for technical assistance. Many principals believe that any information needed can be found on the Internet. Our children need to know what they have found, how to cross-reference it, how to use it, and how not to be guilty of plagiarism. With a new curriculum project required for 8th-grade graduation, the school library has become doubly important. As City Councilmembers, you fully understand the importance of researching an issue. Students specifically need to understand how to organize their research, how to take notes with proper footnoting, where to find sources and cross references, how to do their bibliography.

Imagine being a young person attempting to write a term paper in high school or college -- and speaking of high schools, I think someone mentioned that the George Washington High School 185 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 would soon be without a librarian. I want you to know that Germantown High School presently does not have a school librarian. Students come to me without knowing how to look up an author. Do you look up the first name or the last name? is a frequently asked question. I am here to teach our middle-school students, and I stick with them because they are the hardest group to convince that they must become serious about their education. That is the reason why I'm still working as a teacher of library practice in the middle school. I say again, if I retire, my position may be cut. It is also the reason why I am here today seeking your support. In the 29 years that I have been my school's librarian, we have posted numerous role models and news-makers. To name some of them: Ozzy Davis, actor, humanitarian; Rick Williams, ABC channel newsman; the late Honorable David P. B. Lewis and Jerry Pinkney. I always try to bring people to the school that the 186 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 children can associate with much later. I extend to you an open invitation for a visit at anytime. Thank you. )

Thank you. Very disheartening. Thank you so much. Mr. Wiesman?

Well, actually, not that I'm going to say the last is the best, but I really was the last add-on, and Mrs. Brown and her two colleagues here really should have an opportunity to talk first. And I won't keep you once I get my chance.

Thank you. Then I would like to ask Miss Douthit, who I've known from college days. And, you know, I'll make one short statement only, and that is, you charter-school principals or the pioneers in education, and you're to be commended for all that you do. And we're with you a thousand percent.

Thank you so much, Councilwoman Blackwell.

Thank you.

Good evening, everybody. 187 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Our perspective from Universal Institute Charter Schools is a perspective that reflects our charter interest. I'm Lauren Douthit, Chief Administrative Officer and Principal of our new school. Let me say that we view the perspective of relationships with the public schools as a vehicle of really promoting partnerships. And for Universal Institute Charter School, we have already pursued a partnership with our local public school, Stanton Elementary, and a relationship with the principal, Mr. James Otto, on pursuing vehicles for working together, number one, on technology, and number two, utilization of library resources. Let me just read excerpts from my statement here that you have in front of you. Our perspective is, any service that facilitates access to information is a program that is crucial to students being prepared for the challenges of the 21st century. Access to information is paramount to all of us who have a vested interest in the education of children, particularly students in the inner city. And particularly for 188 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 our charter school where we have a school-to-career focus curriculum. Parents and educators alike are highly motivated to see that the acquisition of information and informational services is made available to all of our students. In the educational arena of standards-driven curriculum and instruction, we must ensure that appropriate links to information exists for urban students. Today's learning environments must provide substantive resources for teaching research skills for problem-solving and higher-order thinking schools. If inner-city students are to be adequately prepared for communicating in a multicultural world, it is paramount that they are able to use various types of informational services made available through qualified school personnel and rich library collections. The need exists for library facilities from the Board of Education in Philadelphia to be available to any public school. Let us remember that public taxes pay for public schools. Last spring, I personally attended the 189 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 All Is All Conference sponsored by the School District of Philadelphia's Office of Best Practice where one guest presenter highlighted the gross discrepancies in reading achievement that occurs in urban versus suburban communities. According to this research, one significant factor was the lack of substantial school library services to students in urban communities. For students in the inner city, access to school-related reading materials is more likely to occur through school-based library collections and programs. If we do not recognize the significance of this belief on behalf of children, we do the future of our communities and our city a great disservice. As our newly-elected mayor, John Street professed to parents of our Universal Institute Charter School just two weeks ago, quote, Make no 19 mistake, charter schools are public schools. We should be equally concerned about the quality of services and instructional programs in all of our schools. Universal Institute Charter School and our community development organization, Universal Community Homes lend support to this endeavor 190 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 towards equalizing the educational playing field as it relates to access to the library facilities of the School District of Philadelphia for all public schools.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Gail Hawkins bush.

Good evening. In the essence of time and the other people, I will make it very short. You know, Councilwoman Blackwell and Councilwoman Cohen, that I've addressed this body on numerous occasions dealing around the issue of education. As the Chief Operating Administrator of the Alliance for Progress Charter School, which we are in our second year and we are located at 19th and Cecil B. Moore Avenue, we're owned by Women's Christian Alliance, which is the oldest social services agency in the City of Philadelphia, founded over 80 years ago by a minority female. We are in a precarious position. We are across the street from a local public school that does not have a library, but we utilize the Cecil B. Moore Library at 23rd and Cecil B. Moore Avenue. 191 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 One of the first calls that I got in the community was from Mrs. Rule, who is the CEO of that local library, inviting us and our teachers to the school. Subsequently, all of our grades, K through 4, walk the six blocks -- rain, sleet, snow, or shine -- to the library to utilize those facilities. Now, we have a small library in our school. It's a small donated library, but this, of course, is a larger library. I think I want to echo what my colleagues said about this whole issue of collaborative partnerships, and I would be remiss, as you know, Councilwoman Blackwell, if I wouldn't make certain recommendations that I think can help with the blue-ribbon committee, can help work with the collaborative partnerships in the community as a charter school. Because we are a public charter school, we should and have access to all the particulars. One of the things that concerns me that's different in the charter schools is that we are the charter schools for all people. And when I say that is, we are open in most cases a little bit more than our brothers and sisters in the 192 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 public school. And I would like to propose, and you might like to investigate to the blue-ribbon committee, that schools that have libraries in the areas where there aren't any libraries, that these schools become the lotus of control, become hubs of the community that are not only open from to 8 2, or 8 to 1, or 8 to 12, but are open on weekends so that kids in the communities can utilize the libraries of all the things that we talked about. Now, we are steeped in our institution in the curriculum frameworks. We are guided by those principles, rules, and standards. We utilize all the issues based on diversity, cross cutting competencies, and all the multiple kinds of forms of education that our young people need to have. We don't know for sure whether the kids in our community -- and need I remind you that 19th and Cecil B. Moore has the highest rate of crime in most cases, health inequities. Ninety percent of our students receive free and reduced lunch and on and on and on and on and on. I don't have to bore you with those kinds of horrible statistics about the community. 193 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 What I need to see is the schools becoming an integral part of the community, not just open during those prescribed 190 days, 900 school hours, but be participatory as active agents for educational change in the community. As an charter school CEO, I am a systemic reformer, but I like to put the word "sustaining" systemic reform, and we've got to be about this business of sustaining our young people so they become productive citizens. The other issue I'd like to recommend that you might want to investigate, as you know, I'm a classmate of yours, I'm from the Bronx, and I never forget that. And I grew up in an environment where public transportation was affordable. We cannot afford to put our kids on the bus at 19th and Cecil B. Moore Avenue to travel the six blocks to 23rd street because, you know, it's a little convoluted there to use the library, so we walk. Why not -- and Elliot and Mrs. Rule were very kind.

We mailed Free Library information home to every parent so that every one of our 204 students this year have library cards and their parents have library cards. 194 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 But why couldn't, during the school time, that the library card give you free or reduced fare on the bus if it traveled to a library. Why does a teacher have to secure a private bus or walk her class through all kinds of inclement weather to the library? Why can't that library card be a ticket for other kinds of things based on what we do in the community?

Excellent idea.

You know, those are the things that I think are important. The other thing is, when I think about my parents, who are young, perhaps receiving certain kinds of services that are, of course, being taken away from them, who work all the time. Our institution is open from 7 in the morning till 6 o'clock at night. So we have a proviso for all kinds of people who have varied work schedules. Looking at these libraries in these communities, we need to make them actual hubs for other kinds of activities in addition to the books, where people can get -- of course, we offer GED and all those other kinds of specialized 195 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 courses, but the libraries need to get the pulse beat of the community. Now, Elliot mentioned earlier that they're open, like, from to 5 or, you know, 4 to 6 whatever. Maybe we need to do a census based on 7 what is the pulse beat of that community. I work 8 in a community that 12 o'clock to 7 o'clock is an 9 active time. I live in a community where 7 in the morning till 4 o'clock is an active time. So we need to begin to look at our communities and service the people in the communities for those needs. I could go on and on and on and on with ideas and suggestions, but one of the things I think is very vital to this issue of libraries in schools is what we heard earlier when we heard about Cato and all of the issues about -- let me say to you, I am steeped in history, I understand the concept of history, but our young people need to learn the diverse issues of history. The bookstores don't offer it, and they're not going into the bookstores because the average young today who goes into Borders either at Broad and Cecil Moore or 17th or 18th and Walnut is being 196 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 followed, is being looked at, is being questioned as to why that person is in that bookstore. So we've got to make libraries the kinds of receptive places that are warm and welcoming to the people in our community. That's the other piece of it. You know, you got turnstiles and all these other magnets and every kinds of things that you have when you go into a library. The other thing is, let's look at this whole issue of those of us who perhaps still have the library book somewhere in our libraries at home or in a book or our college book. Let's look at this whole issue of where we are in forgiving those people who have old books. Now, the book bank full of books from the District. Half of my library is filled with the Clemente book bank of people throwing away books. I remember reading very openly about all the books that were thrown away back of the public library and the people went in and found them. Let's look at forgiving our public citizens who have had some inequity in not returning the book or not having the money to return the book. And 197 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 when it comes down to feeding your child or returning a book, need I ask you what is the priority? Thank you.

Thank you so much. And, again, the testimony was great. And to those who are still here, yes, we go back to college days too. Thank you, thank you. Miss Brown? Thank you so much. Identify yourself for the record and begin.

My name is Lillian Brown. And I'm a retired school librarian, and I want to speak to something that is maybe a little touchy. It's something that disturbed me. It's like school meetings where parents come, the parents that you would like to speak to are not here. But this concerns some principals who seem to feel that after schools are wired for computers that they have a resource base and libraries are not needed. A friend of mine who went out -- and as I said before, the principals who I would like to speak to are not the ones who are here. She was 198 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 out on sick leave and when she came back, the school library and some rooms in the school had been wired for computers, and half of her collection was thrown out. And when she asked the principal about it, he said, Oh, we don't need these books now, we have the computer. And she said, Well, what about the kids' book reports? He said, Oh, I didn't think of that. So I think that in the way of solutions, we need some admonition and love, you know, kind of enlighten people that a database, the CD ROMs, and the Internet do not take the place of a good, well-organized book collection and a certified librarian. They are two different things. And I'd like to say to the Honorable Madam Chairperson -- I thought Anna Verna would be the one I'd be addressing -- and to the other members of City Council and the educational committee, I'm not anti-computer or anti-Internet, for I can testify that the computer is a wonderful tool and there are many resources on the Internet. There may be found information on astronomy, geography, history and government, 199 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 among other things. There are lists of recommended books and best-sellers. On the Antartic Peninsula, ice shelves are crumbling faster than anyone had predicted, and that information is on the Internet. It is possible to find out what percentage of Haiti's female population is illiterate by looking on the Internet, and careful research will show a Microsoft balance sheet. If a person wishes to find the characters in the book Moby Dick, it is only necessary to explore the Internet. However, in order to read a copy of Moby Dick, one must take a trip to the library because that is where the book is. As children move through various stages of development, they need to be introduced to the world as it is, and not only the one that they happen to see. Books open windows on those parts of the world that a youngster may not know about. It is literature where the customs, the social mores and values of a society are presented and promoted. In literature, the reader meets characters who behave in ways that are good or not so good, and the reader must decide, is this the 200 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 kind of person that other people admire, or do they avoid him? In order to grow and mature into responsible, productive adults, children have to read and report on those books they have read. Reporting on literature develops thinking skills in children such as when and where does the story take place, who is telling the story, who is in the story, what happens to them, what is the main idea of the story, and how was it expressed? Children need this encouragement of reading in order to develop reasoning skills and understanding of the written word. This is part of the Charles maturation process. There needs to be a collection of appropriate literature in each school so that teachers and students may have adequate material when it is time to advance the student in this phase of his growth. A repository of good literature is necessary for reading development, and this cannot be found on the computer. The computer is an addition to the library. It is another way of packaging or presenting facts. It cannot replace a repository 201 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 of literature anymore than can canned or frozen foods replace the farmer.

Literature is the entity in which children learn to respect their culture, along with its customs and values of other people as well as that of his own. And that's the only point I have to make.

Thank you very much. Mr. Wiesman, identify yourself for the record.

Yes, I'm Gerry Wiesman. I'm a former employee of the school system, I was a special-class teacher, counselor and principal. But presently, I'm a volunteer in an intergenerational reading program at the John F. McCloskey School, so that's where I'm grounded from. I wanted to say before I get to this, and I'm only going to pick up some points. Tracy, I'm sorry. We addressed this testimony and I hope your colleagues can read it. But to Council Chairperson Miss Verna, and I'm in error for that so please accept my apologies to, Miss Blackwell. 202 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540

Oh, certainly.

The other thing I do want to say is I want to thank Councilman David Cohen for staying here. Of course, I'm not surprised. He's had a tradition, really, of being interested and concerned about what happens to the people, and certainly for Chairperson, at this time, Councilwoman Blackwell.

Thank you.

What I really want to say is just a few issues really agreeing with what was said earlier. There was some wonderful testimony here. But basically, one of the concerns I have is that there's an equity issue here. A few years ago, Superintendent Clayton raised the question of equity, that all of the students need to be taught the same thing, that there wasn't going to be a population that got a better education than some of the others. And when you are denying access to a library for all children -- and I hear that there's 110, so that there's means only 70 libraries that are available for children. That should be for every child. Now, the second issue is that the 203 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 librarian -- there's been enough talk about the professional, certified librarian. That is an active learner. She brings to the child and the teacher the collaborative process that needs to be inserted in the learning process. Okay, I will not throw stones at any other position, but a library needs a certified professional librarian. Another thing is that we have seen that the libraries have been dismantled or diminished. When you do that, you are denying the child or the student the access for self-learning and the opportunity to select their own literature for pleasure and information. And in a democracy, personal choice is an important component of individual freedom. Lastly -- now I'll get off my box. The John F. McCloskey School is an example of -- this is where I'm coming from -- of this current funding dilemma. While it has a library, it has not had a librarian for three years. While it has successfully -- because that's what we're saying, go out and get money. While it has successfully competed for funding grants and is involved in the 100 Book Challenge, its students are still denied 204 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 equal access to current information with its many components. A library, not a classroom library, but a library here would be cost-effective because the materials are shared. In this one space, all can come together and use what is there. Lastly, and I hope this is not off the wall, I don't think anybody asked -- I'll pick on you, Councilman Cohen, asked you to become the Councilperson. That was an activity you chose and pursued it. I say that in the sense that you are the leaders and responsible in some way for this to be a liveable city. And while the school system is a separate entity, I would hope that you can exercise what you see as you do your responsibility to make this a city for all of the people. I think it's about time we stop signed supporting the dumbing down of education. (Applause.)

I want this to be a matter of record. From 2 o'clock till 6:15, we've heard about the 100 Book Challenge. What's interesting is that charter schools, which are public schools, 205 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 and that's a free service to the public schools, are not included in the 100 Book Challenge. We are not even considered for the 100 Book Challenge. And a lot of us certainly can't afford it independently.

And that's unconscionable and unfair.

Exactly.

And we will deal with that as an issue. This committee will deal with that and we will and ask for a response along with all the other information, along with update on what's happening on this proposed blue-ribbon committee. Do we have anyone else here who would like to testify? Sir, please come forward and testify. And then -- well, I appreciate all of your patience and then we will be on our way. Please forgive us for holding you so long. And regret that we were unaware that they were having another hearing before this one on this day. Please identify yourself for the record and make your testimony. Go ahead, sir..

Good evening, Honorable 206 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 Jannie Blackwell and members of the City Council. My name is Mr. Maurice Okereke. I'm currently the librarian in the public schools, a State certified librarian.

Can you spell your name for the stenographer, please.

Yes, O-K-E-R-E-K-E.

Thank you. Oh, yes. I have you on the lease.

My colleagues had to leave because they were pressed for time.

I think I called you earlier but I mispronounced your name so you probably didn't recognize it. I'm sorry.

I see, sure. First of all, I thank you for giving us the opportunity to testify on behalf of the students and staff of the Mitchell Elementary School and the surrounding Mitchell School community. Our plight is lamentable. Most of the things that I have to say have already been said so I'll make it as brief as possible and hit the nail on the head. 207 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540

Thank you.

There is no justification whatsoever in any civilized society for closing libraries -- repeat, no justification whatsoever. I come from a different culture, an African culture. Why? Libraries are to get information. The academic eye of any institution. When we close libraries, we are sending the wrong signal to our children, that libraries have no place, have no values at all in the civilized society. I can't forget what happened not too long ago in the library, where I have only two computers, only one is connected. A school of 7, 800 student. Two of my student asked me Mr. O. -- that is what they call me. They said, We can't believe that we only have two computers, one connected to the Internet for whole school. For 800 students, Councilpersons, isn't this outrageous? We -- this country prides itself, claims to be the richest and the greatest of all. Why then can't it provide for its youngsters who are going to be the future of tomorrow? That is what -- believe me, sometimes I -- it -- I don't 208 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 know what to say. Sometimes I -- I get confused. So this is a very serious matter. And every year, more than five elementary school libraries are closed and more will be closed this year. We have no listening centers in my library. Sitting rooms are (unintelligible). So let me make it brief, please, Councilpersons. I would like you to send delegates to the various public schools. Let them report to you. Honestly, you will not believe what their investigation will dig out. Okay. So and I also I thank the President of the -- Mrs. Zimmerman, the President of the school library, and Debra -- Miss Debra Gniewek and the other library practitioners. They really a picture, a facsimile, an exact picture of what is going on in the public school today. Before I hold my tongue, let us all remember that what we do to children today, they will do to our society tomorrow. I thank you very much.

Thank you so much. (Applause.) 209 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540

I'm sorry, forgot one thing. Solutions, solutions. As Miss Debra Gniewek suggested earlier, please, we are appealing to you to take some of the surplus, the City surplus and apply it to our youngsters' education. Secondly, most of the educators -- the principals don't know the values of libraries. It is time somebody brought them together to enlighten them on the values of libraries. They don't know at all. Thank you again, thanks a lot.

Thank you very much, sir. And it is unfortunate that sometimes in a democracy, we take so many things for granted. We thank you for your commitment to education and to Mitchell School. Thank you. Do we any comments from members of the committee? (No comments.)

Let me thank Councilman Cohen and let me Councilman DiCicco for hanging in. Let me thank Councilwoman Miller's staff and mine as well. And let me say then that 210 11/10/99 ED. COMM. - RES. 990540 at this time, the education hearing -- this committee hearing will be recessed hearing will be recessed subject to the call of the Chair. Thank you all. You've done a great job. I think we've made our case. Thank you all God bless you and thank you. (Adjourned at 6:26 p.m.) - - - 211 C E R T I F I C A T E I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing proceedings of the Council of the City of Philadelphia of Wednesday, November 10, 1999, were reported fully and accurately by me, and that this is a correct transcript of same. RE: COUNCIL COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION BILL NO.'S 990041, 990540 __________________________________, JOSEPHINE CARDILLO, Registered Professional Reporter