I know – we are preaching to the choir here.
You already know that school libraries are important. We know they are important. WHY DOESN’T EVERYONE KNOW THIS ALREADY????
Sigh.
As a profession, no matter where any of us are in this profession, we all need to be more vocal about telling people about the value our library is bringing to our community.
We’ve all see libraries have their funding cut, or just eliminated all together. It happens too often! And it happens way, way too often in school libraries.
Waiting until that announcement happens to start leaping up and screaming about our value? That’s just too late. Those discussions on our value need to happen all the time!
So I was pleased to see this opinion piece in the student-run Geneseo University newspaper, talking about the problems caused not just for an individual school when a library is lost, but for the larger community.
We have an excerpt below, and encourage you to click on their link to get the whole thing!
Decrease of libraries should cause societal panic, especially in impoverished communities
by Maria Pawlak
“…The United States can’t afford to fund libraries, but when they do, they are severely depleted. Though they’ve gone downhill since 1999, the most striking losses were during the years 2009-2010 and 2013-2014. The first drop can be attributed to the recession of 2008, but the second dip is more pressing, which was caused by a cut in funding, according to a report by Kathy D Tuck and Dwight R. Holmes.
It’s not that schools don’t want to employ librarians, there just simply isn’t money to spend on their salaries. After the financial crisis of 2008, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed and increased funding was provided to programs nationwide, including schools and libraries. In 2011, however, funding was cut and school libraries were forced into even further decline.
In Chicago, for instance, public schools have gone from more than 450 librarians to fewer than 150 librarians in more than 600 schools, all within a four-year period. In Los Angeles Unified, which is made up of more than 1,000 schools, almost half of their librarians have been lost in the past decade, according to Education Week.
In Florida, the number of librarians employed has dropped 27 percent since 2005, according to an article from 2017 by the Herald Tribune. In New York City, the number of school libraries had dropped more than 50 percent by 2014. A 1974 state law requires middle and high schools in New York to hire librarians in direct proportion to the size of their schools. If complied with, this would force the district to double the number of librarians, which could cost up to $30 million.
One could argue that the funds do exist—they’re merely disappearing to other positions. Nationwide, schools have seen an 11 percent increase in counselors, a 19 percent increase in instructional aides and a whopping 28 percent increase in school administrators. These increases could be coming at the expense of libraries and librarians. The idea presented, that librarians aren’t worth keeping around, is dangerous.
Something that educators and creators of modern education have invested countless amounts of time and money into is standardized testing. According to numerous studies, there’s a direct correlation between librarians existing and students scoring higher on reading and writing tests.
According to a Colorado study, schools that maintained or gained a librarian between 2005 and 2011 had fewer students scoring ‘unsatisfactory’ in reading tests in 2011. Schools with at least one full-time equivalent librarian averaged significantly higher advanced CSAP reading scores than schools with less than one FTE endorsed librarian.”
Check out the rest of this opinion piece here.
And be sure you go tell someone about the value you are providing to your community today!!! Literally, your community is relying on you!