I was a kid who regularly had dozens of Oakland library books stacked around her bedroom. Those books shaped my childhood and my life. Now, as a teacher in the OUSD, I see my own students’ important interactions with their libraries. Some, like me, love to read, and have found librarians who push them to explore exciting new authors. Others love to play games, work on the computers, and hang out with friends in the TeenZone at the Main Library downtown. The libraries provide security, friendship, warmth (metaphorically and literally), knowledge, and a powerful message that our city values the minds of its residents.

If we close our libraries, we deprive ourselves as a community. We eliminate important refuges for students, we remove a cornerstone of early literacy for young children, and we abandon support for a lifelong love of learning. Please, Oakland, do right by your people: Keep our libraries open.

Hello,
I’m a resident of Oakland and a public high school english teacher, and am writing to tell you that it is incredibly important to save our public libraries! The libraries are vital places many of our young people go to get credible information on everything they do not have access to at home or in their schools (and the disparity in public schools is growing as more and more is cut due to public ed budget shortfalls from the last couple of years). My students (especially the low income ones) rely heavily on public libraries to use working computers with internet, ask librarians for help to research, to finish assignments, submit their work electronically, you name it… Librarians and libraries are what saves so many of our students who would otherwise slip through the cracks. Additionally, many teachers I know rely on the libraries being open to help their students (literally bringing their students to the library after school or meeting them there on the weekends to work with them because their school libraries have been so drastically cut). Teachers rely on the public libraries to fill their in-class libraries with library books. And much of the teaching that I do in terms of how to research relies heavily on the search engines my students and I can access for free only through aclibrary.org. Guess who showed me how to access and teach this to my teens? Yes, a librarian.

It takes a whole community to support our kids. And we need to take ownership where we have the power to make that difference. I know I want to help create a better community where more kids are empowered and educated than are not – and I assume you do too. Please show it by voting to allocate the $9 million to it! I understand there is an additional $14 million from a parcel tax through Measure Q that will help support it. Also, the police and firemen really need to start paying into their pensions too. When many of the other public servants have had to take pay cuts and caseload/class size increases over the past few years to balance public budgets (not to mention we have hideous pensions when compared to police and firefighters), it is ridiculous that they haven’t shared in that. I just heard that 72% of the city’s budget is spent on Police and Fire Departments. That is absurdly high! We need to allocate money to proactively provide for our community! If we do not, we will surely pay even more in the end. I’ve read that the biggest thing prisoners have in common is a very poor educational background. Libraries (and the plentiful resources they offer besides books) are one of the few remaining free resources that build education and empowerment in which low income residents still have access. It is up to you to preserve this. Please do the right thing and vote to allocate money to keep the libraries open. It is so badly needed in Oakland right now!

I am trying to foster a love of reading and learning in my son, but to do that I need the resources of my local library which provides me and him with an endless supply of books. If multiple branches close, it will make it so much more difficult for not only my son, but other children in Oakland to have access to these valuable tools. I am one of the few people who probably uses the library the least, there are many others who depend on it for internet use, study space, and research material.

Libraries are for many children one of the only places where they can access such an infinite amount of knowledge. Lets not take this away from the generations to come.

In 1997, I started working in an Oakland public school. Coming to the community as an immigrant, I wanted to learn about the City’s history and share this sense of local pride with the school kids.
The beautiful Oakland History Room atop the Main Library was a treasure trove of photos, memorabilia, maps and ‘realia’ —that is, all the things that make history leap off the pages of a book or a bulletin board and make history alive.

Look there, it says, here’s a picture of our street from 75 years ago. Here’s a map of our neighborhood that shows what the land looked like before buildings. And you can go to the library there and look up when your family first got here.
With information and help from the history room staff, I created an eye-catching presentation to celebrate that Black History Month at school. Not every kid likes to read, but they do get pictures —which we know are worth a thousand words.

Go to any of these 14 branches slated to close, and you will see kids after school. Take those branches away, and then where will those kids go, and what will they do when their learning resources are closed down?

“Expect Success” is our motto at Oakland Unified, and we’re proud to call ourselves “Most improved urban school district” for the last six years. Are we to reverse this trend? One thing I have learned from working in schools is that kids are hungry to learn and they will find a ways to engage their learning styles despite whatever limitations. They find places to ‘hang-out.’ Leave only 4 libraries open for only 3 days a week for the whole city and you are creating more opportunities for the wrong kind of learning.

Books are but one way of learning offered in libraries, and school kids are but one segment of the community. Libraries have also provided me with resources while tutoring ESL to war refugees and youth with disabilities.

Libraries are more than bookshelves; they are community centers that provide citizens with learning resources of many kinds for diverse learning styles. They keep our history accessible. They are public meeting places where anyone can get government information. In their absence we can expect to see more mischief, illiteracy, and sense of lost pride (not to mention further strain on civic infra-structure). Keep Oakland beautiful, diverse, and vibrant —keep our libraries open!