Strawbridge Elementary School Library Mission Statement:
Our mission is to provide support for students and staff so they can become effective users of ideas and information (AASL, 2009). We hope to instill a love of learning by collaborating with students, teachers, administrators, and community members and providing access to a wide variety of books, magazines, new technologies, and research tools. As 21st century learners, our students will learn to be responsible digital citizens and contributing members of the educational community.
AASL (Ed.). (2009). Empowering learners: Guidelines for school library programs. Chicago, Illinois: American Association of School Librarians.
Retrieved from http://strawbridgevb.weebly.com/
I have selected the Strawbridge Elementary School Library as the library I will be “visiting” and reflecting on for this course. The library’s mission statement is above and is one that I feel contains all needed information that a mission statement should generally have. According to Moran & Morner (2017), the mission statement for organizations should answer the three questions, “Who?” “What?” and “How?”. The “Who?” in the above mission is the students and staff. The “What?” is instilling a love of learning and creating responsible and contributing members of the school. The “How?” is by collaboration with stakeholders and by providing access to a wide variety of materials.
As stated by the Center for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas [CCHDKU] (2019), a mission should be concise, outcome-orientated and inclusive, with the mission statement not exceeding one sentence. While the Strawbridge mission statement is outcome-orientated and inclusive, the statement is more than one sentence, so it doesn’t necessarily follow the “concise” guideline. However, I feel like in order to contain all necessary information, it does the job. The Strawbridge mission addresses the inclusive guiding principle by having a mission statement that is very broad in both the goals and the stakeholders mentioned.
While the Strawbridge Library did a nice job on the mission statement, the library does not have a vision statement, objectives, or strategic plan mentioned on it’s site. I did speak to the librarian and she directed me to the Virginia Beach City Public School Library Media Program’s goals and objectives. These are rather precise. It should be noted that a vision statement could not be found for the district.
VBCPS states that the rationale for their goals and objectives are to provide “guidelines, directions, and answers concerning procedures and recommended practices to be used in the library media centers of Virginia Beach City Public Schools” (VBCPS, 2019). CCHDKU (2019) maintains that objectives should be S.M.A.R.T. + C. VBCPS’s objectives lack several of these guidelines. The specific, measurable and timed portions are not present, however, the goals and objectives do contain the achievable, relevant and challenging portions. They also cover the three types of objectives given by CCHDKU by addressing the behavior change, the community outcomes and the process objectives. However, I do feel like the goals and objectives have a lot of complex words and jargon that regular community members would not understand.
As an actual stakeholder in the Strawbridge Elementary Library, I feel excited to be a part of this library and to see the “what” and “how” come to life for the community and school. However, I do wish there was an actual vision statement and that clear objectives and goals were stated.
Resources:
Center for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas [CCHDKU]. (2019). An overview of strategic planning or “VMOSA” (vision, mission objectives, strategies, and action plans). Retrieved January 26, 2020, from Community Tool Box website:https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/structure/strategic-planning/vmosa/main
Moran, B. B., Morner, C. J. (2017). Library and information center management (9th ed.). ABC-CLIO.
Virginia Beach City Public Schools. (2019, July). Library Media Handbook. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h95c9Eoi8QpvgH3PuwsYx_3noqyU9c8kKkrWYYQNrOc/edit?usp=sharing
.