Unified School District No. 232 – The Monticello Trails Middle School Library in Shawnee received a $4,000 competitive grant from the Northeast Kansas Library System (NEKLS). This grant is designed to help member school libraries renew and expand their print and electronic collections during the 2024-2025 school year.  MTMS is involving all core and exploratory classes in the suggestion process, to provide new literature materials into their classrooms to support their content curricular instruction. 

Grant funds were used to support literature within a variety of content classrooms including: ELA, Pathways, Social Studies, Connections, World Languages, FACS, Choral Music, and more.  Social Studies, ELA and Pathways are using their book sets to create literature circles that support their content standards. MTMS also improved their in-house collection gaps by adding more science content, in both non-fiction and graphic novel styles.  The Library Media Specialist, Amanda Ketterling, also opened the selection process to students for recommended book or author requests to meet the needs of various student interests.  The school ended up adding 390 more books to the MTMS Library Catalog. 

“My goal as the Library Media Specialist is to help all children discover a love of books and empower intellectual curiosity. In order to do so, literature needs to be present throughout the building  and needs to represent ALL of the student body within the library collection. With this grant, we are grateful to be able to purchase more books for cross-curricular learning, along with increasing our diversity and social emotional literature options,” expressed Amanda Ketterling, MTMS Library Media Specialist. 

The goal of the NEKLS School Grant program is to help school libraries renew and/or expand their print and/or electronic collections during Fall 2024. It was open to any member school libraries in the northeast region of Kansas. Fifteen libraries were selected to participate in this grant cycle. 

“School libraries deeply enrich the lives of students from pre-kindergarten through 12^th grade and we are excited to hear about the results of these grant programs,” explained Michael McDonald, director of NEKLS. 

About MTMS: Monticello Trails Middle School (MTMS) is one of three middle schools in USD 232. The purpose of Monticello Trails Middle School is to educate and empower students to become responsible citizens. MTMS has approximately 654 students enrolled in the 2024-2025 school year, along with 75 staff members facilitating learning.

About NEKLS: Northeast Kansas Library System (NEKLS) is one of seven Kansas Regional Systems of Cooperating Libraries. NEKLS is dedicated to providing universal access to exceptional library service through its 117 member libraries (11 academic; 48 public; 50 school districts; 8 special) in the 14 counties of Northeast Kansas through the cooperation and peer support of NEKLS member libraries, and the assistance of the NEKLS staff of library consultants. 

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