Louisiana Librarians: Make Us a Must
Debra Lau -- School Library Journal, 1/1/2002
Worried that the state's school districts might start slashing jobs once money gets tight, Louisiana school librarians are urging that the state school board make librarians mandatory in elementary and middle schools.
"We're not strictly panicking about jobs," says Ellen Miller, who firmly believes there's a direct link between academic achievement and having a well-staffed library. "If we don't stop and make a stand right now, libraries are going to get kicked to the side."
Miller, a librarian at Bissonet Plaza Elementary School in Jefferson Parish, a suburb of New Orleans, was one of the first librarians to return in 1995 after Jefferson eliminated 15 elementary- and 10 middle-school librarians in the early 1990s. She and her colleagues feel lucky to have narrowly escaped losing their jobs recently, following thunderous protests by school board members and parents.
About 20 school librarians brought their case before Louisiana's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) in December to plead their case. There are no precise dollar figures on how much it will cost to secure librarians for all Louisiana schools, because each county has different needs, says Jill Fatzer, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of New Orleans, who testified before the board. What is known is that about 25 percent of the nearly 1,200 public schools, grades K–8, across the state are without librarians. And Jefferson Parish, with 54 elementary schools and only 18 librarians, is the neediest. BESE mandates librarians only in high schools. There is no such requirement for elementary and middle schools if they have centralized book collections or classroom collections, Fatzer adds.
It might be difficult, however, to find qualified media specialists to fill those new jobs. Louisiana, with some of the lowest salaries for teachers in the country, already suffers from a lack of certified teachers. "Very few people are going into library services because of the uncertainty of the job and the lack of support for it," says Miller, who believes that the initial staffing hurdle will ease once the school librarians become mandatory.
Meanwhile, school librarians in neighboring Texas may soon have to pick the same fight with their state board. An estimated 25 percent of the state's schools don't have librarians either
