LIBRARY REFURBISHMENTS:
MCKINLEY ELEMENTARY
APRIL 2023

McKinley Elementary is a K-6 school in the Franklin McKinley School District in San Jose. The majority of students at McKinley are considered to be socioeconomically disadvantaged by federal guidelines and based on the high cost of living in the Bay Area all of the students are living in very low-income households that have to prioritize shelter and food over extras such as pleasure reading books, thus relying on the school library as their main source for accessing books for their children.

Daniel Dennedy-Frank was a new principal at McKinley when he applied for the library refurbishment grant. Daniel came from another school district in the Bay Area that had more resources to allocate to the school library, so he was quite surprised to learn that the McKinley library was full of old and damaged books that did not represent the current student body, which is 87% Latino/Hispanic and 9% Asian (mostly Vietnamese). He noted specifically that the nonfiction section had little that the current students could read and understand as they were written for older students and for students with more advanced reading skills, the books in Spanish and Vietnamese were not appealing to the newcomer students or any students looking to read books in those languages as they were very old and tattered, and the picture books were extremely outdated and unappealing for today’s young children. He also found that several of the bookshelves were wobbly and made of unfinished wood and needed to be removed.

An exciting opportunity that we saw was that there was a whole section of the library that was full of teacher resources and not usable by the students. The students were stuck sitting in stiff plastic chairs set around institutional tables cramped up on one side of the large library. Access Books Bay Area staff worked with the McKinley principal and Library Media Assistant (LMA) to get the teacher resources moved to a storage room so that space can be reclaimed for the young readers to utilize.

Over several months Access Books Bay Area staff alongside the LMA weeded out the most old and damaged books from the collection, moved the whole Picture Book collection to the area that formerly held the teacher resources to create an exclusive area for the youngest students at the school, created signs for each section so the children can find the books they are seeking easier, and purchased a new colorful reading rug and soft seating for alternatives to the hard institutional tables and chairs. We also collaborated with a Scout who was doing his Eagle Project. The Scout made two beautiful bookshelves to replace the old, unfinished, wobbly ones and he made a custom bench with a thick cushion for children to sit on under the new mural and read on.  

Photo of new bench and mural with children reading 

On Saturday, April 29, 2023, the staff and board of Access Books Bay Area, members of the administration and staff of McKinley, and 50 additional volunteers came together for an all-day work project to refurbish the school library. Volunteers added spine labels and barcodes to the brand new books for the library and painted colorful murals inside and outside the library to make it more bright and exciting for the students. In all, we donated 1120 brand new books to the library, donated 1500 gently used books to the classrooms, painted five large murals inside the library and one large mural outside the library, and provided lunch to the 65 volunteers. This library in particular underwent an immense transformation and we are so thankful for the collaboration of donors, Access Books Bay Area board members and staff, McKinley’s principal and LMA, the Scout who donated the beautiful handmade bench and bookshelves, and the 50+ other volunteers who donated their entire Saturday to transform this library!