Little Lending Libraries at 5 San Angelo ISD Elementaries Inspire a Community Love of Reading

At San Angelo ISD, we love reading and are celebrating National Literacy Month all September as part of our San Angelo READS! community-wide literacy initiative. Today we feature a resource to inspire a shared love of reading with the community - little free lending libraries. Five SAISD elementary schools, Alta Loma Elementary, Austin Elementary, Fort Concho Elementary, Glenmore Elementary and Lamar Elementary, are each currently home to one of these wonderful libraries. The little libraries are free, book-sharing boxes where anyone may take a book or share a book. They don’t require a library card and function on the honor system. 

"We are so excited to offer our free lending library to the entire San Angelo community. This summer we saw adults and children exchanging books. We hope this will continue throughout the school year,” said Lamar Elementary Principal, Dr. Jennifer Ryan. “This is such a fun way to promote literacy in our community!"” 

Community members that partake in the fun of the lending library are asked to help share the love of reading by taking good care of the book and returning it when finished or by contributing another appropriate book to share via the library box. In addition to the SAISD campus lending libraries, community members can find little lending libraries in other locations in town like at the Kids Kingdom city park and near Lake Nasworthy.

Follow the San Angelo ISD Facebook, Twitter, and website, www.saisd.org/read, to stay up-to-date on San Angelo READS! Community members are encouraged to share how they celebrate reading and National Literacy Month all September with the hashtag, #SAISDReads. 

San Angelo READS!

The San Angelo Reads! community-wide literacy initiative was founded by the District in 2020 to promote and encourage reading and the SAISD future-ready learner profile attributes among SAISD students and the greater San Angelo community. The goal of the literacy initiative is to increase awareness of the importance of literacy and to inspire a love for reading. This exciting initiative is driven by statistics which show how vitally important literacy is to providing all students with the opportunities to succeed at a young age. Children and teenagers who read for pleasure on a daily or weekly basis score better on reading and writing tests than infrequent or non-readers.

SAISD kicked off San Angelo READS! on December 9, 2020 with the first annual San Angelo Reads! Day, a day when literacy was celebrated at every SAISD elementary campus with literacy fun like read-ins, unveiling book vending machines and a gift of a book to all SAISD 3rd graders compliments of the San Angelo Area Foundation. Since then, the program has grown to include community pop up events, the Summer Book Patrol program and more. SAISD is focused on building literacy skills that create students who are prepared for future successes, inside and outside the classroom and beyond their time in our hallways.