School district supports Assembly bill for access to online magazines

California is one of just three states whose public schools fail to provide students with access to online magazines and databases. Local school librarians hope that will change.

Sheryl Grabow-Weiss, a library media teacher at A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas, decided to take matters into her own hands and convinced Las Virgenes Unified School District Board of Education members to unanimously support AB 2540, a bill that was suspended this year in the Assembly.

"The bill would allocate funds for subscriptions to a core curriculum of safe, high quality online resources for all California students in public school libraries," Grabow-Weiss said. All students in kindergarten through 12th grade would have access to what Grabow-Weiss called "rich collections of electronic resources."

She said students now use online search engines that may or may not provide accurate information.

"Just because the information is on the Internet doesn't make it reliable," Grabow-Weiss said. "Wikipedia is not a reliable source." If passed, the bill would pro

vide universal access to school subscriptions from school libraries, classrooms and homes.

The school district now pays for subscriptions for middle and high school libraries, a bill that would be picked up by the state. Grabow-Weiss said the Internet subscriptions would be a boon for high school students, who are the primary users of the Internet for research projects. She added that the district would save more than $6,500 per year in middle and high school subscriptions, money that could be used for books or other materials.

Large group discounts would result in lower costs, she said.

If passed, the school district would provide age-appropriate Internet resources that span and support California's standards in all grade levels.

Board member Terilyn Finders worried that the bill might end up as another "unfunded mandate," which might actually add further expenses to the school district. She asked if schools would be forced to increase their bandwidth to facilitate access to a variety of online resources.

"The language made me very nervous," Finders said. She said

that she would support an earlier version of the bill, which has since been rewritten.

Deputy Superintendent Donald Zimring said the bill, if passed, would not be a mandate for infrastructure improvements. Only the software would be funded by the state.

"We need to offer our students a variety of sources to support the curriculum," Grabow-Weiss said. "This bill would allow us to do just that." AB 2540, introduced in February, was amended in April and then suspended. Supporters are hoping to revive it before June 30, the end of the fiscal year.