CA Parents Protest Loss of School Librarian
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By Jennifer Pinkowski -- School Library Journal, 6/23/2008 2:05:00 PM
Budget cuts at one southern California district have parents protesting a school board decision to move their beloved children’s librarian to other schools.
Renee Hanvey, a librarian at the Bernardo Elementary School, one of 17 elementary schools in the Escondido Union School District, is one of eight librarians in the district who will double the number of schools where they work, dividing their time between two schools in the 2008–2009 year.
Parents have bombarded school board members with emails and phone calls, spoken at school board meetings, and gathered 200 signatures for a petition to protest the board’s decision to slash in half the number of district librarians due to a $14.4 million shortfall. Students have gotten involved, too, circulating their own petitions. But officials say the effort is for naught, according to the North County Times, a local newspaper covering the Escondido area, about 30 miles north of San Diego.
Bob Leon, the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources, told the paper that petitions and phone calls would not change the decision, which took into consideration librarian seniority and the need to have the same librarian at schools that feed into the same middle school.
“I don’t see any reason to move me. I wasn’t laid off,” Hanvey told the North County Times. “Our students and our families shouldn’t be disrupted because of a decision made by the district.”
Hanvey did not respond to an SLJ request for comment.
Brenda Townsend, one of the parents protesting Hanvey’s move, told SLJ, “Losing Mrs. Hanvey’s expertise with the site, staff, and students will just make Bernardo’s library that much more inefficient. It is difficult for us to understand how this can be the best choice for our kids. We hope to get the administration to change their minds and let her remain at Bernardo, but at the very least, hopefully Mrs. Hanvey knows that she is loved and supported by Bernardo families and that all of her hard work for our kids is appreciated.”
