Johns, Barnett Seek AASL Presidency
Technology, outreach, advocacy are priorities for both candidates
By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 2/1/2006
The race has begun. Sara Kelly Johns, a media specialist at Lake Placid Middle/Senior High School in New York and Cassandra Barnett, a media specialist at Fayetteville High School in Arkansas, are running for president of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL).
What plans do both women have for the organization? For Johns, it’s making sure that school librarians are “universally recognized as indispensable educational leaders.” And she plans to accomplish that goal through technology. Johns is in the process of creating a blog to give AASL members an opportunity to share their views. “People communicate in different ways, and we have to take advantage of all of those ways in order to meet the issues that face the profession faster,” she says. Johns says she also spent most of her Christmas vacation using a wiki to create an American Library Association (ALA) council resolution on the “65 percent solution,” which she presented at ALA’s midwinter meeting in San Antonio last month. The 65 percent rule, a proposal that would require school districts to spend at least 65 percent of their education budgets on “classroom instruction,” has stirred a lot of controversy because school librarians don’t fall under that definition.
Barnett stresses the importance of advocacy and the need for a common language so that everyone in education—not just media specialists—are on the same page. “We’ve got school districts all over the country that are dropping library programs because they don’t see them as essential,” she says. Gaining more recognition within ALA is also a priority. “Members of AASL have not felt a real part of the total organization,” Barnett adds. “One of [my priorities] is to try to make us a bigger part of the total organization and to expand our influence within the ALA leadership and to also raise the profile of school library media issues.”
Barnett’s high school happened to be at the center of last year’s most high-profile censorship case, involving parent Laurie Taylor who challenged more than 50 school library books. “It was an experience that was at the same time horrible and yet, I really found that I didn’t just talk the talk, that I could walk the walk, meaning that I could actually stand up for the idea of intellectual freedom,” Barnett says.
All current AASL members are eligible to vote. Polls will open March 15 and close April 24. For full transcripts of interviews with Johns and Barnett, visit our Web Exclusives page.
