To comply with state legislation, the School District of Lee County board has uploaded more than 100,000 books with thousands still pending review.

“I think it is important; numbers speak a lot,” said Superintendent Dr. Christopher Bernier regarding the ongoing conversation regarding classroom libraries.

When all classroom libraries had to be loaded into Beanstack for review, a total of 102,638 books were loaded.

“By 9/2, with only 16 media professionals available to do the work, they had reviewed 83,000. By 10/3 reviewed 16,175,” he said. “However, our teachers are still buying books.”

Bernier said the total number of books needing to be reviewed rose to 117,790 for an additional 15,152 books that teachers purchased between Sept. 2 and Oct. 3.

“By 2/29 we had reviewed 56,608 books, but another additional 10,000 books have been added to the review. We are consistently making these reviews.These teachers understand media specialists work at night, outside of their regular day and weekends, to complete this task,” he said.

Bernier said the same book titles are beginning to circulate again, which is making the reviews go a little faster, as a review has already been made on the particular book.

“We need more certified media specialists to help us work on solving the volume issue,” he said.