Library Cuts Still Run Deep
School, public libraries nationwide grapple with more budget cuts
Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 7/1/2004
School and public libraries nationwide are gearing up for another year of budget cuts, layoffs, reduced hours, and closures. Some 2,800 K–2 students in Little Falls, MN, will be without school libraries next fall, following a decision by the board to close all five libraries and eliminate three media specialists to help save $1.4 million.
As a result, students in three elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school will be denied access to any library materials for the next academic year, says Sharon Thomas, superintendent of the Little Falls Community Schools. "My recommendation that libraries be cut was extremely painful," she says. "But we were at the point where we had to decide between cutting libraries or eight more teaching positions on top of the 23 we already made for next year."
Meanwhile, Detroit Public Schools are going through their share of problems. The district plans to lay off or eliminate 3,200 positions next year to stave off a $78 million budget shortfall for the current fiscal year and $91 million in the 2004–2005 fiscal year, says June Green-Rivers, the district's executive director for the office of literacy. So far, 22 layoffs have been made across the board, and media specialists are not exempt from getting the ax.
Possible layoffs are particularly distressing for Detroit's school libraries, which have been trying to play catch-up from the "dark ages" of a few years ago when more than a dozen elementary school media centers were closed, says Claudia Burton, the district's supervisor for library media services. In recent years, Burton's office has aggressively pursued federal Improving Literacy Through School Library grants and managed to secure $322,000 in 2002 and $268,000 in 2003 to help pay for library materials.
The Rochester Public Library and Monroe County Library System in upstate New York may be facing more layoffs and shorter hours as a result of Mayor William Johnson's budget proposal to save $176,000, says Kevin Loughran, the system's finance director. Although circulation at the libraries' 10 branches has increased by 24 percent over the last year, there's been a seven percent drop in hours of operation and 26 percent of its staff have been eliminated. With the most recent proposed cuts, four full-time children's librarians' positions could be eliminated and library hours could be slashed by four hours a week at seven out of 10 branches.
New York City's Queens Borough Public Library—which has the largest circulation in the nation—is lucky to have so many backers. Since May, 10 out of 14 council members have held various rallies at several branches throughout the borough to protest Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed budget cuts for fiscal year 2005, which could reduce hours at 21 out of 63 branches to only three or four days a week.
Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, funding for Queens libraries has been down by $14 million and overall monies for libraries throughout the city have been slashed by $50 million, says Joe Catrambone, a spokesman for the Queens Borough Public Library.
"Going below a five-day schedule would be a tragedy for our city," says Thomas Galante, interim director of the Queens Borough Public Library, "Even our five-day schedule does not provide the hours of service our 825,000 library cardholders expect."
