Clarion School District is comprised of three schools: Clarion Elementary (700 students), Clarion Middle School (700 students) and Clarion High School (900 students).

Library media specialists Valerie Bonnie, Rebecca Hatalowich, Lorena Sears, and Marissa Shoemaker will be presenting the 2009-2010 library media budget to school administrators next week. Please see the following attachments including a PowerPoint overview of the budget to be shown to administrators as well as the budget itself in Excel format.

The budget in Excel includes appendices for professional development additions, periodicals, and computer software and technology additions.

Clarion_School_District_Budget.ppt 

final_budget.xls

Professional Development

The district’s professional development collection was sorely lacking. The budget committee has composed a list of recommended titles for each school within the district, to be found in Appendix A.

Periodicals

A list of periodicals, comprised of age-level appropriate materials for each school, is included in Appendix B.  New for this year, the high school periodicals list includes college/test prep materials for use in the library or for teacher check-out.

Computer Software

The budget committee requests that Classroom Jeopardy be purchased for the elementary and middle school levels. This software platform is designed to help students with standardized test prep and can also be customized by teachers for individual lessons. A breakdown of costs for this software addition can be found in Appendix C.

Technology

Additions to library media center technology will help our libraries stay at the forefront of information sharing. The budget committee is recommending purchases of SmartBoards and laptops at each school and additional LCD projectors at the high school. This technology can be used for school media presentations/lessons and items can also be used for teacher check-out as needed. Technology addition costs can be found in Appendix D.

Additional Considerations

When planning collection development for each school, the budget committee chose to focus on one area of emphasis at each level. At the elementary level, the emphasis was placed on our social studies collection. Funds will be used for updated atlas, books, etc. This decision was based on an elementary-wide teacher survey.

At the middle and high school levels, the emphasis was placed on book club titles. To encourage students to read, each school has started a book club. These allotted funds will be used to purchase multiple titles of particular books so that students can check out the books for participation in the book club meetings. Titles will be chosen with student, teacher, and librarian input.

Funds were allotted at each school for Access PA, which for a minimal cost, puts thousands of resources at our students fingertips.

Summary

The goals of the budget committee are to encourage a love of reading and to create independent learners with the newest resources and technologies available.