10,000-book giveaway leaves SF teachers with feel-good ending

The long gray Potrero Hill warehouse that houses the donation center of the nonprofit Friends of the San Francisco Public Library is usually filled with old books, stacks and stacks of dog-eared tomes, thousands of pounds worth.

[...] thanks to a generous donor, the building was recently filled with brand-new books — more than 10,000 of them, to be given away to public school teachers such as Liana Koehler, who know exactly what to do with them.

Koehler, 32, a fourth-grade teacher at Gordon J. Lau Elementary School in Chinatown, said that for her students, reading is vital because many are English language learners and school is an important environment for practicing their language skills.

Teachers from elementary schools across San Francisco lined up down the block one day last week for the giveaway, an opportunity to secure new books for students who have little access to printed material at home.

“It just invigorates anyone who participates,” Mike Alva, a spokesman for KPMG, said as he surveyed the room of volunteers in blue T-shirts carrying out boxes of books to load into teachers’ cars.

Kaitlin Ramirez, 36, a special education teacher at Alvarado Elementary School in Noe Valley, was picking out books with her 15-month-old son, Eli, strapped to her front, feeding him crackers as they moved through the warehouse.