California: School Libraries Axed at Cash-Starved Districts
We've been posting a lot about public libraries it's easy to forget the school libraries are also have issues. This article reports either the closing, reduction of hours, and even the inability to buy new materials. Several school districts are mentioned.
At Natomas Unified School District, the school library has become a luxury that can't be afforded.
Library staff at eight elementary schools were laid off last week as district officials cordoned off their rooms with locks and chains, according to Sacramento Bee.
Natomas officials told the Bee the move could save up $1.5 million in salary and benefits. The district, which is grappling with a budget shortfall of $17.3 million, hopes to reopen the libraries when the budget improves, according to the Bee.
According to Heidi Van Zant, Natomas district spokeswoman:
"These kinds of cuts are a last resort. No one wants to close elementary school libraries, but our budget situation is so severe there was no choice."
The closed libraries mirror a larger trend of media centers falling from their once-valued purch in the education eco-system. Last month, Elk Grove Unified issued final layoff notices to about 57 library staffers. Folson Cordova Unified shuttered its libraries last summer but reopened them with reduced hours after extracting salary concessions from the teachers' union. Corona-Norco, Las Virgenes and Lompoc school districts have similarly laid off their school library personnel.
And don't forget Modesto:
In March 2009, the Modesto school district cut its library staff just after it received a $509,000 grant for training and buying supplies. Now, only two librarians cover the district's four junior highs, and nine are split among 23 elementary campuses, according to the Modesto Bee.
"Across the United States, research has shown that students in schools with good school libraries learn more, get better grades, and score higher on standardized test scores than their peers in schools without libraries," according to a report from the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science.
Davis High's {Librarian Stephen] Walker said the library has about 27,660 books, but that he hasn't been able to buy any new ones in the past two years. When teens started fawning over "Twilight," Walker had no budget to offer the books for checkout. Instead, he and his wife donated two sets of the four-part vampire series.
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For those who think libraries have not been relevant since the Internet, librarians point to the skills students learn among the walls of bookshelves. They learn to read, use computers, write papers, use figures in databases, research, and use and cite sources like books and magazines in papers.
"There's a lot of information out there. A lot of it is biased and unauthenticated," Walker said.
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