Philly Reinstates 13 HS Librarians

The Philadelphia School District has restored funding for 13 high school librarians whose positions were eliminated in June due to budget cuts. The librarians were notified on September 3 and began returning to their jobs the same day.

The reinstatement is part of new school chief Paul G. Vallas's plan to spend $2 million or more to upgrade high school libraries and science labs throughout the city. "By the end of September, he wants all 33 high schools with a library to be staffed by a certified librarian," says Crystal Patterson, the district's director of library programs and services.

High school librarians' salaries will now be paid by the district and not individual schools, which previously had sole discretion over media center funding. Since the average annual salary of certified high school librarians —about $88,000 including benefits—is higher than teachers', librarians are often the first to get cut, explains Patterson.

Patterson, who received a promotion, was given permission to hire academic coaches to provide instructional support to the district's librarians. She will meet with district officials in October to discuss other library improvements, including upgrading collections.

Librarian John Politis, who lost his job in June and subsequently returned to Bodine High School, says "teachers and students gave him an overwhelming welcome." But Patterson reports that some principals were not warm to returning librarians. At one school, a principal instructed the librarian not to interact with students and only to check out books. Thus, another goal of the library department is to "re-educate administrators on what a school library should be," says Patterson.

While the source of the new funds still remains unclear, Patterson says Vallas has verbally committed the money to high school libraries. "He's very pro-libraries," she says, citing his expansion of the library program during his six-year tenure as Chicago school chief. Vallas was hired in July by Philadelphia's School Reform Commission to head the troubled school district—the nation's seventh largest—which was taken over by the state in December 2001, due to high dropout rates and low test scores.

At an August 14 Reform Commission meeting, Vallas said he visited city high school libraries where "half the collection is missing and the collection that is there is—for all practical purposes—obsolete," reported the Philadelphia Inquirer . "Libraries in affluent school districts are multimedia centers. They are resource centers not only for students but for teachers," he said. "We want to model our libraries and science labs off some of the elite libraries and science labs that you see in some of the more successful school districts."