For the first time in its three-year history serving Central Falls middle school students, the Segue Institute for Learning charter school has a room for a library.
What is doesn’t have are the books to fill that library.
“What you see are mostly half-full shelves,” said Nina Marold, a full-time art teacher at Segue who also serves as librarian. “We have a fairly good fiction section, but nonfiction is lacking.”
In another part of the state, a middle school like Segue might be able to turn to a few wealthy parents for help filling up those shelves. But Segue is in bankrupt Central Falls and 87 percent of the student body is considered low-income under the federal standards for discounted school lunch. Wealthy parent benefactors are few and far between.
So Segue turned for help to Brown University, an institution that shares its community-oriented mission and where the bookshelves are always full.
Brown then turned to its well-stocked campus bookstore, which has put together a program that allows its customers to donate books in exchange for a discount.
“We thought because of the central position of the bookstore on the campus, it would be a great way to reach students and faculty,” said Tanitia Sello, a member of the Brown president’s staff advisory council. “We are offering the program in-person and online, so essentially this opens it up to the whole state. It’s a great effort to reach out as far as possible.”
To maximize the use of its library, Segue wants to at least double the 2,000 titles currently on the shelves, which are now mostly used books cast off by other schools.
For the Brown campaign, Segue sent a list of desired titles to the university, which the bookstore now makes available to customers at the campus shop on Thayer Street and on the Internet.
Brown, which kicked off the campaign Sept. 30 with teachers and students from Segue at the bookstore reading books and explaining why they needed donations, plans for it to run through Dec. 30.
Brown has set an initial goal of donating 500 books and in the first week bookstore Director Steve Souza says the store is already more than 10 percent toward that goal.
“We’re gratified. People have responded very well,” Souza said.
Although the primary goal of the program is helping students read, Souza said he hopes the partnership with Segue will also drive traffic to the store and raise its profile in the area.
“We want to show people the bookstore,” Souza said. “We want them to know that we are College Hill’s bookstore. Now that Borders is gone, we are one of the only places with a café where you can sit down with a book. We will gain from that in the end.”
So far, the majority of donations have been made in person, instead of over the Internet, Souza said, which plays into the goal of introducing people to the store.
“I think people have wanted to come in and see some of the books and put their hands on them,” Souza said.
The store also keeps a running list of what books have already been donated and staff can help customers decide which book to buy if they want to find a different title.
Sello said if the program goes well, it could be expanded to other schools in the area.
“We are looking at this as a pilot program for a new initiative, which is building Rhode Island book by book,” Sello said. “Ideally we would like to carry on this partnership to other schools. We value that these young people are our state’s natural resource and are worth investing in.”
The partnership with Brown is the latest part of a Segue book drive that started with requests to the community for book donations last year. The school also has a partnership in place with Wal-Mart.
“Coming from a community where families can’t afford things like food, it is more of a challenge raising resources,” Marold said. “We supply pencils and notebooks for most of our students and every student gets breakfast and lunch for free.”
As for what books they are counting on Brown customers to donate the most, Marold said nonfiction books that students can use for research, particularly in areas like science, technology, art and music.
In addition to reference resources, the library is important for Segue’s “drop everything and read” period, when all students read for 30 minutes during the school day.
As for how the program has been received by Segue students, Marold said those who visited the bookstore for the kickoff were energized.
“Our students were very excited to be at Brown,” Marold said. “Each one spoke about their experience at Segue and they had an opportunity to read books. They got Brown pennants and most of them said they couldn’t wait to come to Brown when they were older.” •
