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Verona Area School Board reviews district library plan, highlights equity and access goals
Summary
The Verona Area School District presented a three-year district library plan emphasizing collection development, K–5 curriculum coherence and outreach; staff reported eight certified librarians, roughly 5,400 students served and about 130,000 resources. The plan will be filed with DPI and placed on the next consent agenda.
Teresa Voss, introduced by the superintendent to present the district library plan progress report, told the board the plan is grounded in the Future Ready Librarians framework and the American Association of School Libraries standards and focuses on equity and access across the district.
"We have 8 certified librarians, librarians for 9 school libraries and 11 of our schools... We're serving 5,400 students, about 850 staff, and we're still sitting at about a 130,000 resources for books," Voss said, summarizing the system's current staffing and collection footprint. She said the district will continue work on collection representation, curriculum coherence (K–5), and promoting independent reading time for students.
Voss outlined three goals: (1) collection development with an emphasis on representation and appropriate collection size and age; (2) curriculum work to ensure coherent K–5 library instruction and co-teaching with classroom teachers; and (3) outreach and partnerships to broaden community access to books and library programming. She named partnerships including the Madison Reading Project and BASD reading initiatives as part of outreach efforts.
Board members asked about resources and capital constraints. Voss explained that state common school funding administered through the Bureau of Public Lands supports books and databases but cannot be used for capital items such as shelving. "That amount has been fantastic. We are not struggling with that. We did have a renovation a couple years ago in quite a few of our libraries... and we are still tight with shelving," she said, noting capital needs remain.
Voss said the district is advocating to increase full-time middle-school librarians, building on progress placing full-time staff at elementary schools. She added the district intends to file the three-year plan with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and place the plan on the consent agenda at the next meeting for formal acknowledgment.
Why it matters: The plan frames library services as central to curriculum and equity work, shows concrete staffing and resource counts that affect classroom access, and identifies funding limitations that could affect capital investments and librarian coverage going forward.
