Librarians Escape Being Turned into Teachers in FL District

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Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 05/19/2008

"Our librarians rock! Taking them out is a CROCK!" read the signs at a May 12 St. Lucie County (FL) school board meeting. The protest—of a cost-cutting proposal to take school librarians out of the library and reassign them to classrooms—worked. Just this week, School Board Chairman Carol Hilson announced that the district's 45 media specialists and 38 library clerks would remain in their media centers next year.

Debbie Remington, media specialist at Manatee Academy, holds one of the signs that changed the board members' minds.

In an email message, Hilson wrote that the board had decided to "keep our media centers whole for the 2008–2009 school year."

The cost-cutting proposal had been in response to a $15 million budget shortfall for the St. Lucie County Public Schools. Reassigning the media specialists to the classroom—a scenario made possible because of the opening next fall of two brand-new schools—and transferring the library clerks to school offices would have saved the 38-school district $3.7 million. Had the plan been approved, school libraries would have been open only limited hours, staffed by "floaters"—the handful of media specialists who lacked teaching credentials.