California Parents Save School Librarians

Responding to the state's budget crisis, affluent parents across California are rallying to raise funds to help local schools save programs and personnel, including library media specialists.

Parents at Hacienda Elementary School in San Jose, CA, for example, have contributed the $52,000 needed to keep library media specialist Dayle Moore on the job next year. The San Jose Unified School District had eliminated Moore's position—along with all 22 district librarians—in the latest round of cuts to the 2003–2004 budget. The parents group Hacienda Involved Parents and Staff acted quickly to redirect its annual budget to assume Moore's salary, after voters rejected a $6 million parcel tax in June, which would have funded the library positions.

Moore, San Jose's 2002–2003 Teacher of the Year and a 34-year district veteran, will oversee the personnel who will keep the library open next year. But her title will be "resource teacher," since the position of librarian was officially eliminated.

In Manhattan Beach, CA, seven school library positions were saved in March, thanks to parents and community members who raised nearly $1 million to help save 20 district jobs. But local parent Mark Silva, who received a letter requesting a $1,200 donation to his children's public school, objects to the fund-raising, telling the Sacramento Bee that the effort only worsens the divide between rich and poor communities.

"If the haves can always solve their problems by throwing money at them, then the system will never be fixed and the gap will just increase," Silva says.

Parents in poor districts say they often don't have the money or time to donate to their kids' schools.