Joe.My.God. LGBT News
The Indiana Digest reports:
Governor Mike Braun’s “Freedom and Opportunity” budget proposal is throwing the future of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library around the state into flux. Under the previous budget, the state matched donations from local partners making the program budget 50% donations and 50% funds from the state.
The proposed budget removes that funding altogether. The program came to the Allen County Public Library in October and has already signed up more than 6,000 kids.
Executive Director Susan Baier said the loss of those funds could change what the program looks like. “But, worst case scenario, it may end up ending the program altogether,” she said. “And I hate saying that out loud, but the reality is it’s a possibility. Because losing 50 percent of funding, it’s hard to come back from that.”
The South Bend Tribune reports:
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which the country music star started, sends new books each month to more than 10,000 children in St. Joseph County and more than 5,000 in Elkhart, LaGrange and Noble counties.
Now found in every Indiana county, the program has been hailed as helping to raise Indiana’s child literacy ranking from 19th to 6th place nationwide. Early reading skills, advocates say, lead to better academic performance in kindergarten and beyond.
Imagination Library costs local and state funders a total of about $30 per child each year. The Dolly Parton program provides the books at a vastly discounted rate. Meissner points out that it equates to just about $1 per month per child for the state.
Last year the Imagination Library celebrated having given its 250 millionth book since the program launched in 1995.
Indiana v. Dolly Parton www.14news.com/2025/02/19/t…
— Ryan Teague Beckwith (@ryanbeckwith.bsky.social) February 19, 2025 at 10:37 AM