Press enter or click to view image in full size
“An Assault on the American Dream”
This week, as hundreds of thousands of Bay Area students start school, BookBooster is kicking off its second year of fundraising. We want to add to the 10,000+ books we helped provide for high-need students over the last year. And with the Trump Administration’s persistent attacks on our public schools, BookBooster’s mission is more important than ever before.
Last May, President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy Devos recommended over $9 billion in budget cuts to federal education initiatives — a proposal rightly described as an “assault on the American Dream.”
Budgets reflect values. By introducing cuts that disproportionately affect low-income schools and families, Trump and Devos have devalued our nation’s most vulnerable students.
They’ve also devalued literacy. In addition to cutting programs aiding teacher development, bullying prevention and more, Trump and Devos’s unprecedented proposal includes cuts to over $200 million for initiatives enhancing student literacy — including the Innovative Approaches to Literacy Program, which helps promote reading in schools, and provides free books for low-income students.
If the Trump administration is working tirelessly to suppress students with the greatest need, we must work tirelessly to support them. So today, we’re asking you to help us reach our back-to-school fundraising goal: $9,000—or 3,000 books — before September 30th.
Same Mission. New tools. More Books.
Last year, we started BookBooster to enhance student literacy, and help transform Book Deserts into book-rich environments. Thanks to our donors, BookBooster has helped Bay Area teachers restock school libraries, create culturally-responsive book collections, upgrade curriculum resources for special education classrooms and more.
The teachers we support know that books are strongest correlate to literacy growth, and that providing books can help close the Bay’s growing literacy gap. Right here in our backyard, only 34% of low-income students met state literacy standards, compared to 75% of more affluent Bay Area students.
Closing that gap means persisting in our mission. And this school year, as we provide more books for under-resourced schools and families, it’s imperative that we do so equitably, and find strategic ways to support the schools who need us most.
Good news: building on our partnership with nonprofit First Book — which helps provide books for schools at an average of $3 each via their Marketplace — BookBooster is now able to easily identify high-need schools using the First Book Needs Index.
Press enter or click to view image in full size
The First Book Needs Index is a new tool that integrates publicly available poverty statistics with First Book’s proprietary school-data, and helps unveil Book Deserts — which too often lack bookstores, well-stocked libraries, and resources to acquire books.
Using this new tool, BookBooster will identify Bay Area schools with the greatest need. And with your help, we aim to provide an additional 10,000 books by May 2018.
Bigger than Books
At BookBooster, we believe books are necessary to enhancing literacy and educational equity for our students. But our fight is bigger than books. If Trump and Devos are successful, school leaders, teachers, and students will lose access to the resources they need and deserve. We must support the communities they won’t.
Each BookBooster donor has helped ensure that thousands of students—regardless of their family’s income, or schools’ access to resources — receive the books they want and deserve. Please donate today, help us reach our 3,000 book goal, and join us in our fight to support and protect public schools.