Most schools in the Detroit Public Schools Community District do not have a functioning library. On Wednesday, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti asked the school board to change that, proposing $8.7 million to put libraries back in 89 schools, some of them open by fall 2027, as Chalkbeat Detroit reported.
The district serves roughly 49,000 students, and in 2019-20, the most recent breakdown available, 82% of them were Black. Whatever Detroit does or fails to do about its libraries lands mostly on Black children, in a state that already trails the country on the basics: in 2020-21, 74.6% of Michigan public schools had a library media center, against 87.6% nationally. In 2020, Detroit’s district employed just two certified librarians.
The one-time money would pay for up to 4,000 books per school, furniture, displays, initial staffing and a new cataloging system. Keeping the doors open would cost about $5 million a year to staff the libraries for three periods a day. The money would come out of the district’s capital plan for school upgrades, which also covers air conditioning and accessibility work.
Vitti said the first goal is access, even if it is limited. “But in the short term, at least all the schools have libraries that are open for certain periods of the day, and not only certain periods of the day, but after school as well,” he told the board. He also floated a longer-term idea: a pathway for current teachers to become certified school librarians,.
Board chair LaTrice McClendon called the moment significant. “I just want … to point out how historic this moment is,” she said.
The libraries went away through years of budget cuts, as enrollment fell from a peak of nearly 300,000 students in 1966 and the district cut costs.
Nothing is final. Vitti presented the plan at a board study session, and the board is expected to vote in November or December.
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