Dumpster Filled With Hundreds of Classic Books Outside Chicago School Sparks Outrage

Authored by nbcchicago.com and submitted by SAT0725

A dumpster full of classic books seen outside a Chicago Public Schools high school this week has sparked an outcry on social media. NBC 5's Lauren Petty has the story.

A dumpster full of classic books seen outside a Chicago Public Schools high school this week has sparked an outcry on social media.

A photo posted to an Andersonville Facebook group showed hundreds of books, including titles like "The Great Gatsby" and "Hiroshima," tossed in a dumpster outside of Senn High School on Chicago’s North Side.

A neighbor said she saw the books last week and posted an image on social media.

"The books didn’t look like they were destroyed or anything wild so that was really sad," the neighbor, who wished to remain anonymous, said.

Lightfoot Thanks CPS Safe Passage Workers

With the school year coming to an end for Chicago Public Schools students, local leaders are publicly thanking Safe Passage workers who helped protect the children as they commute to school. Kye Martin reports. (Published Thursday, June 20, 2019)

She added that commenters "got so mad and so heated" in response to her post.

"Give them to some kids who could read a book," she said. "This is silly."

NBC 5 camera crews captured footage of the books in the dumpster Monday afternoon, but Chicago Public Schools did not respond to multiple requests for comment more than 24 hours after the dumpster was seen.

The district later said Senn High School is "currently undergoing renovations to their library" and the school "needed to weed out books that were in surplus or outdated." They also noted nearby Rickover Naval Academy is in the process of moving to a new school building, but said outdated books were being "properly recycled during this process."

"It's possible that some books were included in the weeding process by accident during these major renovations and moves," the district said.

Though CPS said it is in the process of evaluating the situation, it remained unclear what happened to the books that were seen in the dumpster. When NBC 5 crews returned to the scene Tuesday, the dumpster had been removed.

Jim Beam Barrel Houses Caught in Massive Flames

Firefighters in Woodford County, Kentucky, continue to put out fires that engulfed two barrel houses at a Jim Beam aging compound overnight and into the morning. (Published Wednesday, July 3, 2019)

Multiple organizations said they were hoping to recover the books.

Daniel Barat, who owns two Rewired Café locations in Chicago, said he went to the scene to try to salvage the books for the cafe’s community library, but they were already gone.

"They weren’t there," he said. "I actually went inside and talked to one of the employees and I'm like, ‘Where is the dumpster with all the books?' 'Oh they took it.'"

A CPS manager was seen outside the school talking to custodians, but it remained unclear where exactly the books came from and where they had gone.

Tbjkbe on July 3rd, 2019 at 15:50 UTC »

As a school librarian, these types of post haunt me but not for the reason most people think.

Every year, I weed the library collections removing old, outdated, torn and hardly used books (i.e. books that have not been checked out in five or more years).

There are years when I weed a lot, others not so much. I do give many of them to teachers and to students but the problem is people who don't understand why I would remove ANY books. I would have parents upset their child came home with a book "the librarian was going to throw away." I would have teachers talk negatively in the hallways questioning the "need to fund the library if she just throws them away." I even had a janitor who did exactly this, they took pictures and posted on Facebook. It is a nightmare.

bookchaser on July 3rd, 2019 at 15:32 UTC »

Schools throwing out or recyclng old classroom fiction books is more common than people realize.

No thrift store wants 30 or 100 aging copies of The Great Gatsby. Classics, and books assigned for classes, tend not to be popular books, and they can be difficult to give away, particularly in large quantities.

spizzywinktom on July 3rd, 2019 at 15:14 UTC »

Teacher here. This same bullshit happened at our school. We had hundreds of books that had torn pages and bindings, and no library would take them, so they ended up being recycled. Somebody took a pic of the bin full of books and sent it to the local news outlets. After the citizen outrage, we keep all our unusable books in storage.