Friends,
It seems that for the past month I have been asking you to “do” something on a regular basis—Invite a Legislator to Your Library; Get Out the Vote!; Contact your Representatives to Save IMLS Funding.
I am very happy to share the following from ALA President Julie Todaro:
Hello library advocate leaders and thank you for all of your efforts to dramatically increase the number of Members of the House of Representatives this year signing our "Dear Appropriator" letters of support for IAL and LSTA. Last year, our signer totals stood at 124 and 88 for those programs, respectively.
I could not be more pleased to tell you that as of the close of business on Tuesday, all of us -- working as a team led by Emily and especially Adam and the ALA Office of Government Relations -- had convinced 146 Members of the House to support IAL funding in FY 2018 and 144 Members to back LSTA. (See whether and how your Representative supported IAL and/or LSTA with our sortable online tracker tool.)
Those totals, which are for the first time bipartisan on both letters, represent a 18% increase in support for IAL and a phenomenal 64% increase for LSTA over last year! Put another way, effectively one-third of the entire US House of Representatives has told the House Appropriations Committee in writing that they support BOTH IAL funding at $27 million and LSTA appropriations of $186.6 million in FY 2018!
So, sincere thanks for all that you do—for AASL, for school libraries, and for the students we serve!
Audrey Church
AASL President, 2016-2017