We did a number of things for our new middle school. First, since we were splitting the district in half... we were able to get some resources from the "other" middle school. We asked for, and received, healthy donations from our 5 elementary schools. (In our district, the elementary schools do all the fund raising, some have budgets in excess of $50K!) We asked for donations from the two public libraries, as the school serves children from two municipalities. We asked for monetary donations from community businesses. And, we received grant money from our community "elementary learning foundation." Now that I think about it, I believe the school district itself provided a substantial chunk of change.
We've also done what we called a "Ton-of-Books" book drive. It was actually done as a community-wide initiative, spearheaded by the school district, to get books donated for some very needy inner city schools and their students. While done for a different purpose than what you're trying to do... it could work. We sent flyers out through all the schools (elementary, middle and high)... posted flyers around town, got the community paper to advertize, etc.... asking everyone to cull their personal libraries and make a donation. Our goal, to literally get a ton of books. The first year, we got over 9,000 POUNDS!!!!
The second time we did it... I think we got one of the boys in the community to organize it for us, he was working on his Eagle Scout some-thing-or-other.
Has anyone every done a district wide book drive to supplement the library of a new school? We are re-acquiring a school in our district, and our schools received the books from that library when it closed previously. We would like to jumpstart their new library so that the children are able to have the same volume of books district wide.
