HOUSTON – A concerned parent in the Houston Independent School District is pointing out a major problem with the district’s libraries: the books are missing.

Parent and community activist Gerry Monroe recently attended a meeting in the library at Cullen Middle School and he was so shocked by the empty shelves he snapped pictures and shared them with local television stations, which demanded answers from district officials about the barren shelves, KHOU reports.

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Monroe told KTRK he wasn’t the only attendee at the conference in the library last week that were shocked by the situation.

“At that point, they were like, ‘Is this the library?’ ‘Yeah, this is the library.’ ‘Where are the books?’ I don’t know. This is the normal,” Monroe said. “It’s empty. It’s flat-out empty.”

The pictures showed the vast majority of the shelves in the middle school library are empty, with only a handful books available for students.

HISD officials refused to allow a KTRK reporter into the library to record the situation on camera, and instead issued a prepared statement that focused the blame on issues with state education funding and alleged school officials are working to fix the problem.

“All HISD middle schools recently were equipped with classroom libraries to provide more access to literary resources thanks to Literacy in the Middle, a district-wide initiative that aims to increase literacy among middle school students,” the statement read.

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“HISD administrators are aware that some middle schools still need books to supplement their school libraries and are searching for ways to meet that need despite significant financial challenges resulting from the state’s school finance system.”

Monroe said Cullen Middle School isn’t the only one in the district with virtually no books in the library.

“When you go to some of the more affluent schools in the more affluent neighborhoods, you don’t see this problem. You see the problem in the black neighborhoods or the Hispanic neighborhoods,” Monroe told KHOU. “I understand the district is in a budgetary crunch, but at the end of the day we still have kids that report to that school every day.”

HISD Trustee Jolanda Jones said as soon as she was alerted to the problem she pressed school and district officials for answers and solutions.

“I literally called the superintendent on his cell phone and said, ‘We need to deal with this.’ I also asked the principal, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ We’re working on the issue,” Jones told KTRK. “”It’s the historically disadvantaged schools that don’t have resources. It’s sad. It makes me feel sad that things in HISD are not equitable. They’re not equitable. There are a lot of things that aren’t equitable not just library books. We have schools that doesn’t have nurses. We have schools that don’t have counselors.”

Jones contends books are taking a back seat to more pressing needs.

“The Yates principal said, ‘Yes. We don’t have books but right now we need projectors and calculators so we can teach our kids higher level math,'” she said.

Jones told KHOU other schools are in a similar situation, including Yates High School.

“Literacy is an issue I’m incredibly passionate about, and now that I have been made aware of this I’m going to work with HISD administration to fix it! I also want to thank Gerry Monroe for bringing this matter to my attention,” Jones said.

Cullen Middle School is now soliciting donations from the public to help restock the school’s library and plan to post a link to make donations on the school’s website on November 3.