Beaverton School District Recognizes Beaverton City Library with the 2015 WE Celebration District Partner Award

For Immediate Release: Friday, May 22, 2015

Washington County, Oregon: Inspiring work is happening every day in our communities. Recently the Beaverton City Library was recognized by the Beaverton School District for their role in building student success through innovative partnership with local schools. The WE Celebration Awards, established by the Beaverton School District (BSD) serves, to recognize community partnership teams that are paving the way to success and engagement in their schools. On May 7th, the Beaverton City Library was honored with the 2015 WE Celebration District Partner Award.

This is the first year that the Beaverton City Library, a member of the Washington County Cooperative Library Services (WCCLS), has served on the school-based Community Partner Teams (CPT). The library actively serves on six elementary CPT teams by matching a Youth Services librarian with each local CPT.

This year Beaverton City Library worked with six CPTs, including Greenway, Elmonica, Hiteon, Vose, Chehalem, and Cooper Mountain Elementary schools. These partnerships have flourished over the school year introducing services and activities such as:

• donating over 200 books to the Greenway Elementary trade library
• sharing information with staff and parents about the new WCCLS 3M Cloud Library eBooks
• sharing information about WCCLS.org online resources
• teaching students about book reviews
• attending Career Day, Literacy Nights, Family Nights, Kindy Round Ups, ELL nights and STEM nights. Staff brings an interactive science activity with them to each event – teaching about basic circuits with a Snap Circuit kit.

The libraries' partnership with the Beaverton School District doesn’t end with CPTs, this school year Beaverton Library has also:

• circulated over 1,300,000 materials for children and teens ages 0-17 since July 2014 via the WCCLS partnership
• signed 7,283 children and teens ages 0-17 up for the WCCLS Summer Reading program in 2014 to help prevent the summer slide and increase reading enjoyment
• partnered by serving on the Beaverton School District’s Early Learning Team and presented early literacy workshops at elementary schools as part of the Early Learning Washington County’s Hub grant
• gave weekly presentations during the 6-week Early Literacy course for young parents at Merlo Station High School
• hosted an ACMA Pride & Prejudice preview at the Beaverton City Library
• collaborated with the Teen Library Council and 17 BSD teens
• hosted Oregon Battle of the Books (OBOB) Book Clubs for kids and tweens along with over 275 other free programs for children and teens age 6-17
• worked with the Shine program and Head Starts at local BSD schools

The Beaverton City Library is a huge fan of the BSD's Community Partnership Teams as they have opened amazing doors for students, teachers and librarians. This collaborative effort demonstrates the important role public libraries play in building student success. An important element of that is encouraging children to read throughout the summer to maintain reading and academic skills. This summer the library plans to:

• share a Summer Reading Program skit with students at ten elementary schools and visit nine middle and high schools to promote the 2015 WCCLS Summer Reading program
• participate in four BSD free lunch sites by signing students up for Summer Reading at the free lunch site, and then librarians will visit sites two more times with storytime programs.

For additional details on the WE Celebrate Awards visit the Beaverton School District at www.beaverton.k12.or.us/cmnty

The Washington County Cooperative Library Services (WCCLS) includes the Banks Public Library, Beaverton City Library (and Murray Scholls branch), Cedar Mill Community Library (and Bethany branch), Cornelius Public Library, Forest Grove City Library, Garden Home Community Library, Hillsboro Public Libraries (Main and Shute Park), North Plains Public Library, Sherwood Public Library, Tigard Public Library, Tualatin Public Library, West Slope Community Library, and the WCCLS Outreach to Homebound.

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