From the ALA Washington Office’s District Dispatch blog comes an announcement that the The SKILLS Act has been re-introduced into the House with three purposes: to have a state-certified school librarian in every school, to restructure and re-fund the Improving Literacy Through School Libraries project, and to give school librarian access to professional development funds. Read the start of the post below, then click through to read the whole story.

Note 1/23/2012: The reintroduction of the SKILLS Act does NOT mean that the White House petition has reached its full 25,000 signatures. So if you have not had a chance to sign, School Library Monthly encourages you to visit the White House site and do so before February 4, 2012.

U.S. House Introduces SKILLS Act | District Dispatch via kwout

Check out this thoughtful interview with AASL President (and SLM Advisory Board member) Carl Harvey in the Huffington Post. Thanks to Hilda Weisburg for posting this to AASL Forum!

C. M. Rubin: How Will We Read: In Schools? via kwout

AASL Conference 2011: Preparing Tomorrow’s School Library Leaders via kwout

Congratulations to all of those who were involved in last week’s AASL panel on emerging leaders and featured in the above SLJ Extra Helping article. Shannon Miller is a member of the SLM Advisory Board; Wendy Stephens and Laura Warren-Gross are fellow alums of the ALA Emerging Leaders project.