Jefferson Parish Restoring School Librarians

It looks like 24 elementary schools in Louisiana’s Jefferson Parish Public School System are on their way to restoring their media specialists.

The school board recently approved a motion to make reinstating the positions a priority “as money becomes available,” says Meg Griffon, the district’s library information and media consultant, adding that School Superintendent Diane Roussel is hammering out details on the specific number of school librarians who will be restored each year until all positions are filled.

“When this does happen, all schools will have at least one full-time certified librarian,” says Griffon. “Or, at least, that is the goal.” Although school librarians are required for accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, 24 out of 53 media specialist positions in the 1994–1995 academic year were eliminated due to severe budget cuts, Griffon says.

Indeed, Roussel is busy figuring out how to add the funding for media specialists as a line item in future budgets. But there is money in the pipeline, says Griffon, explaining that there was an increase in tax revenue for the school system following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Why the big interest in school libraries? Griffon says that Roussel, who joined as superintendent in 2003, “recognized that our school libraries had been long overlooked as a valuable component of our instructional program.”

And following Hurricane Katrina—which either destroyed or severely damaged 23 schools—“it would be safe to say that no school [and no school libraries] went completely unscathed,” says Griffon, who was hired last spring to oversee library services for the district. “This new position of library consultant is starting from scratch. And that means trying to find out what has fallen through the cracks since Katrina.”