Las Virgenes School District Faces Librarian Layoffs

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Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 6/2/2008 2:00:00 PM

Faced with a possible $3 million cut to public education, Superintendent Don Zimring is proposing to lay off half of the district’s six certified media specialists, says Sheryl Weiss, a librarian at A. E. Wright, one of the district’s three middle schools.

Currently, one librarian serves each of the district’s eight elementary schools, and there is one certified librarian for each of the three middle and two high schools. But when all six librarians met with Zimring on May 22 to discuss their fates, they were faced with terrible news.

“It is the staffs’ recommendation that the library services be restructured for 2008/09 to provide for three district librarians (elementary, middle, and high school) providing service to each of these instructional levels,” says a memo from Zimring explaining the impending cuts. In short, there will only be one librarian serving each level—elementary, middle, and high school—and clerical staff will be on hand so that the libraries remain open to students and staff.

In addition, Zimring is suggesting that the district work with public libraries in Agoura Hills, Calabasas, and WestlakeVillage to “provide services to our children.”

Replacing school librarians with public library service outrages parent Ann Marie Michael, who has an eighth-grade son at Alice C. Stelle Middle School and a fourth grade daughter at Chaparral Elementary. She’s suggesting a possible solution: that parents pay for the librarians’ salaries. Located between Los Angeles and Ventura County, parents in the Las Virgenes school district are quite wealthy and vocal. Currently, the elementary Parent Faculty Association and the middle and high school Parent Faculty Club pay for the bulk of the library clerks’ salaries, says Michael, who has already forked over more than $1,000 of her own money to help out this year.