AZ Rallies to Save School Librarians
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Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 4/21/2008 2:00:00 PM
School library supporters in Mesa, AZ, are launching a petition and staging a rally in the hope of getting the district’s governing board to reverse its decision to eliminate media specialists over the next three years.
The move is in response to an April 17 story in the Arizona Republic stating that the state’s largest school district—with 87 K–12 schools and close to 74,000 students—was planning to phase out its school librarians, nurses, and speech experts to help trim an estimated $20 million from next year's budget.
By April 19, a group led by Ann Dutton Ewbank, a librarian at Arizona State University and the former president of the Arizona Library Association, had launched a Fund Our Future Arizona Web site to explain the dire situation and urge librarians, teachers, parents, and students to attend a rally, scheduled for 6 p.m.–7 p.m (PST) this evening in front of the Governing Board’s office near downtown Mesa. The board plans to discuss the fate of school librarians at a meeting scheduled for 7 p.m.
Ewbank got great advice from the Washington Moms, three Spokane women who pleaded their case to adequately fund media centers statewide and recently convinced the state legislature to put a $4 million school libraries line item into the state budget.
The Washington Moms—Susan McBurney, Denrette Hill, and Lisa Layera Brunkan—succeeded in getting national attention by organizing a library summit in Olympia on February 1 and convincing American Library Association President Loriene Roy and American Association of School Librarians President Sara Kelly Johns to attend.
Although Roy and Johns won’t be attending the April 22 rally in Mesa, Johns did write a letter addressed to school Superintendent Debra Duvall and Governing Board President Rich Crandall expressing disappointment with their proposal. “It is difficult to make hard decisions when money is tight,” the letter says. “But cutting student access to strong school library programs will not provide equal access for all students to the shared resources and information skills instruction crucial for students to learn and thrive in the 21st century.”
Charlene Picheloup, president-elect of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians, also wrote a letter to the Governing Board saying it would be a “grievous error” to dissolve library positions as a cost-cutting measure.
Arizona doesn’t have dedicated funds for school libraries or mandate certified media specialists at any grade. In addition, school libraries and librarians are controlled at the district level, not by the state Department of Education, which means that when funds are scarce, librarians are typically the first on the chopping block, says Ewbank.
“This is not about saving librarians’ jobs,” Ewbank says. “This is about kids and parents. We’re trying to create strong school libraries for everyone.”
For more information and details about the petition and rally, visit Fund Our Future Arizona.
