I have been waiting — quietly, I might add — to see if there would be any mention from anyone about the Rowan-Salisbury Schools’ plan to “optimize” or streamline (they like to say) by combining jobs next year.  Media specialists are being regrouped with  things like literacy coaches, technology facilitators, and who knows what else?  I am continually amazed (unhappily, I might add) at the way books, real books, are disappearing in our society, and electronics are replacing them.

   I must happily announce  that as long as Families First-NC Inc. and their Second Step Program are in existence, over 1,500 Pre-K, kindergarten and first-grade students in the school system will have at least one real book to hold in their hands and keep “forever” ( as we tell these children), as we handed them out last week all over the county. This is the fifth year our agency has accomplished this goal with no financial help from the school system; United Way and private grants help us.

  But where will the librarians be when someone asks to find another book like the one they received?  Who knows?  Fixing a computer, perhaps.

— Lea Silverburg

Salisbury

Lea Silverburg is director of the Second Step Program, Families First-NC Inc.