School District Cuts Library Staff After Auditor Counts Minutes at Work

Staff -- School Library Journal, 5/1/1998

An outside auditor looked at seven elementary schools in North Kingstown, RI, and said that instead of maintaining full-time librarians, the schools could easily get by with half-time staff. Last month, the local School Committee used that finding to eliminate half the district's elementary librarians.

It is "extravagant and unfair" to taxpayers to have a full-time librarian in every elementary school, said the report by the Cranston, RI., accounting firm of Bacon & Edge.

The firm was hired by the North Kingstown Town Council in an effort to curb school spending. In its February report, the auditors said that 3.5 librarians could do the work now done by seven.

Pamela Rowland, one librarian slated to lose her job, criticized the auditors' method of simply adding up the minutes of formal library instruction called for in the curriculum. Their report ignores the time librarians spend on things like helping students with research, helping teachers with computer problems, arranging author visits, and buying and processing materials, she said.

"Bacon & Edge did not consult or talk to any librarian before they made their report," said Rowland, Media Specialist at Wickford Elementary School.