From books to bikes to banks, Mississippi Valley Library District steps up to address critical service gaps

Mississippi Valley Library District (MVLD): (l.–r.) Kyla Waltermire, Collinsville Memorial Public Library manager; Rob Schwartz, senior VP, TheBANK of Edwardsville; Vicky Hart, MVLD executive director; Sandy Smith, assistant VP, TheBANK of Edwardsville; Katie Heaton, manager, Fairmont City Library Center; and Marie Johnson-Walker, MVLD trustee. Photo ©2017 Sid Hastings

Of the 2,635 people who live in the Village of Fairmont City, IL, 71.4 percent are immigrants who speak Spanish as their first or only language. Most of the adults migrated from Mexico and have a fourth to sixth grade reading level. Some youngsters are “dreamers,” undocumented children who were brought here from Mexico, so termed because they are eligible for deferred action under the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. Their younger siblings, born in the United States, are U.S. citizens.

The village has few jobs or commerce, no elementary schools (the last one closed in 2009), no preschools or day-care centers, few recreational activities, and limited digital access. Although amenities and services are available in nearby communities, Fairmont City folks often can’t access them because of language barriers, documentation issues, or severely limited transportation.

To serve this high-demand community effectively requires a scrappy, grassroots library that throws preconceptions of what constitutes core library service out the window and designs to community needs from scratch. Luckily, that’s exactly what they’ve got, and that innovative and essentially engaged approach is what won the Mississippi Valley Library District the 2017 LibraryAware Commuity Award, presented by LJ and funded by LibraryAware, a product of EBSCO Publishing’s NoveList Division. It carries a prize of $10,000.

The library begins

In 2000, the Collinsville Memorial Public Library (CMPL) decided to extend library service to nearby Fairmont City. CMPL went through training, assessment, and planning. In 2004, it combined library services in the area into the Mississippi Valley Library District (MVLD). In 2006, the voters of Fairmont City chose to join the library district, and Holy Rosary Catholic School offered the district the use of a classroom for the summer.

Katie Heaton, now manager of the Fairmont City Library Center (FCLC), was hired by CMPL in 1997 and assigned to the project from the beginning. Heaton’s attitude explains how the library became the award winner. “I see a need, a real need,” she says, “and we try to fill it.”

Staff members started building trust—and creative library services—right away. The makeshift library opened with 4,000 items and provided a summer reading program along with materials and digital access for all residents. The community didn’t want to lose library services when school reopened, so the American Legion offered a hall rental to continue services year-round. The FCLC moved into the small legion hall in 2008. In 2010, MVLD bought the American Legion building for $185,000 from MVLD funds and began expanding its collections and programs.

COMMUNITY CHANGE-MAKER (Top row, l.-r.): FCLC shares space with TheBANK; Collinsville manager Kyla Waltermire (l.) and FCLC manager Katie Heaton lead story time in a bilingual kindergarten class at Kreitner Elementary School in Collinsville. (Middle row, l.-r.): the monthly “Pokémon & Magic the Gathering” at FCLC, led by former staffer Leonardo Chavez (top l.); librarian Phyllis Beare (r.) encourages young patrons to have “Fun with Phyllis.”
(Bottom row, l.-r.): FCLC’s Teen Initiative; supporters of the Fairmont City Library Center—police officer Scott Penny, Jr. (left), police chief Scott Penny, Sr., fire chief Robert Allen, Roger Juenger of the fire department and police officer Noe Marquez. Scott Penny, Jr., is also a member of the Mississippi Valley Public Library District board of trustees. All photos ©2017 Sid Hastings

Deeper needs

From that new permanent base of operations, FCLC moved to meet the deeper needs of the community. In partnership with the Village of Fairmont City, Collinsville Community Unit School District #10, the Latino Roundtable of Southwestern Illinois, and other local organizations, the library advocates for and engages with the community to develop an array of library services that foster personal and professional growth for everyone in Fairmont City.

The library modified its application procedures to accept Mexican government-issued Matriculas Consulares as identification, allowing all residents access to full-service library accounts. Annual visits from the Mexican Consulate provide assistance to Mexican residents needing to obtain or renew their documentation.

Ready for school

FCLC’s Kids Corner was an effort to help provide both child care and kindergarten readiness. There is no licensed day care in Fairmont City. No one was addressing preschool needs. Heaton noticed that kids came to FCLC with their mothers, who took English classes, so FCLC started its free preschool program with a growing list of activities to occupy and work with the children. Unlike many public library children’s offerings, parents can drop off their kids and don’t have to stay with them.

“We first taught them to write their names,” Heaton recalls. “I asked the schools what they needed. They asked us to teach them to write and recognize their names. It took a long time to convince parents that it was OK to let their small children come to FCLC for preschool, but when [the]mother got work, they came.”

Of course, the library’s help doesn’t stop when children enter school. With Americorps assistance, FCLC provides free homework aid to students of all ages. “The majority of people who show up at FCLC have somewhere between a fourth and fifth grade education. That means there isn’t any help at home for these kids for homework and studies. They face education and language barriers. We had to help them overcome both of those,” Heaton reports.

To fill that gap, Southern Illinois University sent homework helpers. “It has been a great program, and it helps the kids overcome that language problem,” says Heaton.

FCLC also works with children to get them ready for school in the concrete sense: the library hosts a Back to School Carnival at which families play games to win tickets that are redeemed for school supplies. The event is sponsored by the Newsong Fellowship, a church located in Edwardsville, IL.

“When the church leaders came to our library wanting to do a service project, I remember telling them that if they were looking for a great place to do a good deed, they had found it!” Heaton laughs.

As a result of the FCLC presence and involvement in the community, high school graduation rates have risen from 46.5 percent in 2000 to 52.5 percent in 2015.

Educational aspiration

Beyond current schoolwork support, the library is getting students to set their sights on more ambitious goals. When the library opened, “The young were very much in the moment. There was little talk of futures, no talk of college,” Heaton says. “There was a 50 percent dropout rate from the high schools. Now aspirations have changed.”

“I’d ask them what they want to be when they grow up, and they would answer a farmhand, work in a hotel, be a bricklayer. ‘What about something more than that?’ I’d ask. Do you want to be a doctor?” she adds.

“ ‘What are you talking about?’ they would say. Now many say things like, ‘I want to be an engineer.’ It took a lot of hand-holding to get them to even think about college,” Heaton asserts. Now some who came years ago are what Heaton calls “my first-generation college kids.”

The library partners with the Hispanic Arts Council of St. Louis to provide college prep classes (“College Now!/ Universidad Ya!”) that assist Latinx students to graduate from high school and continue their education as first-­generation college students. A Teen Initiative program exposes fifth to 12th graders to new technologies as part of the Illinois State Library’s Project Next Generation grant. It offers a safe after-school teen space and provides a teen lock-in for which participants must earn the right to spend the night by being actively involved in library services.

Spanish spoken here

FCLC hires bilingual English/Spanish speakers from the community to staff the library. The library’s English and Spanish collections for adults and children are among the richest in the region.

“I have the largest collection of books in Spanish around here,” Heaton says with pride. “I started with only two shelves [and] put out the word that we needed any and all Spanish-language books anyone wanted to donate. We buy as many as we can from our materials budget. It is very difficult to get books originally written in Spanish, but people didn’t like books that had been translated. They said translations lost something. I did order some from Mexico, and they were very popular.” Naturally FCLC uses bilingual signs so all residents feel welcome.

Southwestern Illinois College provides free English-language classes at FCLC.

Getting patrons moving—literally

Heaton joined local advocacy groups to push for public transportation until the Collinsville Regional Bus Route 18 was established. This gave the community access to local and regional services and made commuting much easier, shorter, and less expensive.

Yet FCLC’s efforts to get its patrons on the road to success didn’t stop there. The bicycle is a primary mode of transportation in Fairmont City and not just for recreation. So the library partners with Cycle of Giving, a local charity run by Allen Hogg, to offer an annual free bike repair day. Many locals of all ages line up with their bikes to get repairs and rejuvenation. Hogg brings chains, tires, and other parts along with restored bikes. To get service, kids have to write a book report. Heaton tells of one middle-aged man who came with his bike; it was a wreck. Hogg replaced it with a newly restored bicycle so the man could more easily ride to work. “The guy was overwhelmed,” Heaton says.

BUSY DAYS AT FCLC Top row: patrons making use of the library. Bottom row, left: Hector Alcazar (r.) joins Karina Almeida, both bilingual librarians, working the front desk of the FCLC. Right: Mary Migalla, of the Fairmont City History Club, organizes historic photographs of graduating classes from the village’s school at the FCLC. Photos © 2017 Sid Hastings

Banking on the library

The newest service at FCLC is a fully functional bank branch located in the library. Previously, FCLC had partnered with banks to provide financial literacy programs. But with only a credit union in the community, it was clear that the residents lacked access to financial services. TheBANK of Edwardsville recognized that the library is the community hub and agreed to cover renovation costs to establish a banking center in the building. TheBANK of Edwardsville’s Fairmont City location opened in November 2015. It is the first and only fully bilingual banking facility in the St. Louis metro area.

In one year, TheBANK’s holdings in Fairmont City are $1.5 million in deposits, 325 checking and saving accounts, and 155 mortgages equaling $10 million. The service model is proving to be so successful that TheBANK promotes it for replication in its financial network. The library/bank partnership also earned TheBANK a national Community Commitment Award. As an unexpected bonus, TheBANK is installing fiber-optic Internet connectivity in all its branches, which means that soon the library/bank building will be the first in the village with a fiber line. This marks the beginning of the end to the community’s limited digital access, previously provided by the Illinois Century Network. FCLC plans to use the prize money from this award to add its digital equipment to that fiber line.

Jack of all trades

The village does not have a post office, so the library provides partial mail services, including a mail drop and the sale of stamps and envelopes, as well as international fax service. A partnership with AARP offers free tax assistance for low-income individuals, seniors, and those with simple forms.

The library also works to meet its patrons’ most fundamental needs: FCLC hosts an annual coat and toy giveaway each December—in 2016, 350 people were served. Also, the library partners with the University of Illinois Extension to maintain a community garden on library grounds. In 2016, the garden grew 473 pounds of produce, which was distributed throughout the area. The Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation provides access to a traveling nurse for health care at FCLC.

A library delivers

The development of FCLC has taught the Fairmont City community the value of an engaged library. Now, many village officials frequently visit the library, partner on events, make donations, or volunteer there. The village has provided funds to update the building and support library ­services.

Alex J. Bregen, Fairmont City Village president, explains how FCLC has transformed life there: “The Fairmont City Library Center has demonstrated its ability to make our community aware of what a library can do, and [it has] delivered on that promise. We didn’t know we needed a library until we got one. It has been a place of transformation for many residents. Our community has seen many changes since the library opened its doors.... Poverty rates have decreased, reading and math scores have increased, high school graduation rates have increased, and our streets are safer with the youth having a place to go after school to become engaged in activities. Many say the library is the best thing that has happened to the village in years.”

From promise to proven impact, that kind of reputation shows the best of what a library and community can achieve together.