Zurya Anjum, Sartell
I have been a proud Sartell resident for 10 years who chose to live here due to the excellent school system and educational opportunities available to kids.
I have volunteered for many years at the school and am always amazed at the job teachers do with our kids.
Recently, I found out the new high school will not have a traditional library space. I was confused about what that meant so I sought answers. I found out there is no designated library space planned. Instead they are going to have collections of books around the school in different areas like hallways for kids to use. It is not clear if there is even going to be a check-out system for these books. They might be just borrowed on the honor system where you return them when you are done. We all know how effective that would be with teenagers. Those books would sit around in homes for years.
Also, if there is no designated place for a library, it’s a big disadvantage to all kids and especially kids with special needs who get overstimulated with noise and crowds and need a quiet space to focus. A library provides them with a quiet area to study. It does not have to be a big space because with this Digital Age, we all realize access to information can be very easy, but totally eliminating a library space makes no sense to me.
Do we need a 600- to 800-person auditorium that much that will not be used every day? I have nothing against sports, but we’ll have four new gyms at the community center when it opens. They are besides the gyms we already have in schools. It appears we have duplication of a lot of services, but the only thing Sartell residents are never getting is a public or school library. For a city that prides itself on its educational values, it’s a shame to deprive its residents of this much-needed resource. We are the only city of our size in Minnesota without our own public library.
