- The Salt Lake City School District is redistributing books from closed schools to its students.
- The district is aiming to improve literacy and keep children reading over the summer.
- The collection spans a range of subjects and reading levels, from early childhood titles to books about dinosaurs, dragons and Navajo history.
The Salt Lake City School District is giving away books from campuses that recently shut their doors, including Riley Elementary, one of four schools closed in the district. While students went to new campuses, many of the schools’ library collections remained unused — until now.
“People always think, well, can you just take the books immediately over to the library?” said Dr. Tiffany Hall, teaching and learning executive director for the district. “A school library really can’t be an archive. It really needs to be a living body. We’ve got to have enough space on the shelves that kids can see the books. So our librarians will order books, and then as books kind of fall out of fashion, we put them out. And when we read them out, we’d like to share them with our families.”
After sitting untouched for months, the books are being sorted, cleaned and packed by volunteers, who hope to give them a second life in students’ homes…