President's
Message
Kathi Vanderbilt
Welcome back to school for the 2003-2004 school year. On behalf of the GLMA Board of Directors I hope you had a restful and refreshing summer.
Conference Presentations
This summer GLMA Past President, Barbara Hallstrom and I made presentations at two summer conferences, the Georgia School Boards Association
(GSBA) and the Georgia
Association of Educational Leaders (GAEL). Our presentation, The Road to Student Achievement: Using Data to Drive the School Library Media Program, demonstrated the importance of implementing national library standards provided in
Information power: Building partnerships for
learning, collaboration with teachers, and analyzing test data to improve the school library media program. My focus was on the process we used at
R.L. Osborne High School and how we used data analysis, and the school improvement plan to generate new ideas about program improvements. Barbara Hallstrom talked about how this worked at Canby Lane Elementary. School board members, principals and administrators were surprised that we often leave the media center to teach in the classroom with our teachers. Each conference session was ended with a quiz bowl game. We believe participants have an improved understanding of the role of the school library media specialist in school improvement and how the school library media program can positively impact student achievement.
Being Proactive
GLMA is working to make sure that our school boards and educational leaders know more about what media specialists do to promote student achievement and the difference a professionally staffed, fully funded, well stocked, up-to-date school library media center can make. It is up to us to continue this journey by taking a proactive stance and getting the word out about all of the good things we are doing every day for our students, staff, faculty and communities. You can also take a more active role in GLMA by
contacting your District
Chairperson.
Summer Camp
This past summer 55 school library media specialists participated in Summer Camp in Macon. All geographic areas of Georgia were represented. Cindy Thompson, Chair of Organizational Maintenance for GLMA Chaired this conference and make excellent use of DVD-ROM technology by teaching us all to dance the hula. But that’s not all! We addressed issues that effect media specialists and media programs throughout the state. We learned about changes to GALILEO for K-12 and made suggestions to continue to make the interface work better for students. The Digital Library of Georgia (available through GALILEO) just keeps getting better! Pat Pickard and Lasa Joiner presented a session on the latest legislative activities. We also learned about the New Media Specialist Institute from
PeachStar. Learn more about Summer Camp activities and make plans to attend next summer.
Budget Issues
While we didn’t loose any more ground with the state media budget we didn’t
recoup any of the funding that was cut during the 2001 session. However one important change occurred in the expenditure controls that were part of HB 1187. While there were many legislators who wanted to shift the media funds to total local control, GLMA Officers and members were politically active and worked to keep the controls in place as they were written in HB 1187. For this school year the expenditure controls have been changed. 100% of the state media budget will go to the school system/county where it is earned. School systems/counties are not required to allocate 90% of the funding to the school where the funding was earned. Be sure to open a dialogue (in your system/county) to find out how media funding will be allocated this year. Make sure that the needs of your school library media program are known.
We also need to talk to our legislators. Begin today. We need to hit the ground running, start writing postcards, sending letters, and making phone calls. Ask your legislators to restore the state media budget because school libraries make a difference in student academic achievement. Invite them to your school to visit your media center. The
Legislative link from the GLMA Web page has many advocacy tools that can help.
COMO XV & Library Day
Mark your calendars for October 22-24 for COMO XV at Jekyll Island. The conference theme is Connecting, Learning, Changing Lives. There will be over 160 sessions and perhaps the sea turtles will be hatching. Jekyll is a great get-a-way spot and offers a lovely vista in addition to a great opportunity for learning and collegial exchange. Keynote speakers are Carmen
Deedy, Terry Kay, and Sharon McCrumb. While you have your calendar out, mark February 12 for Library Day at the Capitol and watch for more information on our GLMA Website.
References
American Association of School Librarians & Association for Educational Communications and Technology. (1998). Information power: Building partnerships for learning. Chicago: American Library Association.
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