ALA San Tan Valley Receives Grant for Portable Library

The San Tan Valley campus was selected amongst thousands of applications for funding grants.

Back in March of 2016, James Patterson and the Scholastic Reading Club announced that Patterson would donate $1.75 million to save school libraries nationwide in the second installment of his School Library Campaign. As part of an ongoing effort to keep books and reading a number one priority in the United States, selected school libraries would receive grants ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. Since the grant program’s launch in 2015, Patterson has donated $3.5 million to school libraries nationwide, with all funds are being personally donated by Patterson.

Miss Christi Reay, Assistant Director, said, “We are so grateful to participate in this grant. San Tan Valley does not have a close community library. As all of our ALA families know, we do not have the capacity to have a school library. Now, due to the funding with this grant we will be able to start a portable library for our students. We are thankful to Mrs. Greenberg for the time and effort she put in when applying for this grant. We hope to have the books ordered, stocked, and inventoried for students to use in the Spring. It makes me happy to be able to provide more materials for reading for our ALA families.”

“We’ve just come out of the most divisive presidential election in history – and among all the issues that captivated voters, education wasn’t one of them. It was hardly discussed,” says Patterson. “Nearly half of the American population reads at or below a basic level, and we need to address that problem to foster an informed future electorate. I’ve made it my mission to underscore the vital role reading plays in children’s lives, and the need to sustain school libraries is at the heart of that mission.”

“Last year’s ‘Patterson Pledge’ showed communities nationwide how important school libraries are, but also how gravely desperate they are for books to fill their shelves in the midst of steep budget cuts,” said Judy Newman, President of Scholastic Reading Club. 

In the first-ever partnership of its kind, Patterson joined forces with Scholastic Reading Club to administer funding applications to their network of 62,000 schools and 800,000 teachers. Schools entering were asked to share the story of their school library, including past efforts to make improvements and “great ideas to help create a brighter future.”

Patterson personally read and selected the winning recipients of the grants. Based on past winners, school libraries across the country have been using this funding to purchase new books, add bookshelves, make improvements to their catalog systems, and expand their programing .