This was written by a parent in Los Angeles, who blogs as the Red Queen in LA:
Disarticulating Public Schools
It was a bad day 30 years ago when some business management-type decided to restructure academic departments to be fiscally self-sustaining, economically independent. In this scenario university libraries, a service-providing unit with no inherent money-generating capacity, would be held to the same standard as, say, microbiology with all its grant-overhead revenue generating potential.
Faddish ideas are hard to stop, even bad ones and so this conundrum has trickled down to our primary and secondary level of schooling too. But the model there remains inherently inappropriate; it can never be made to work. Nevertheless in insisting on the impossible, that such departments “pull their own weight”, the standing of libraries has devolved to that of ‘frivolous luxury’, akin to nail-art salons or a car wash.
This is a really bad paradigm. Libraries may be service-oriented, but the service they provide is fundamental support for the essentially solitary activity of learning. While teachers may broker the ingredients necessary for learning, at the end of the day each and every pupil must do their very own hard work of incorporating new material into their understanding. This requires nurturing the intellectual space of the pupil, to provide the support and safety necessary for that process of learning, the rearranging of one’s existing canon of knowledge into a novel set of explanatory connections.
And this is the true function of a library: it provides an atmosphere where ideas can be suspended long enough to permit rearrangement. Libraries are the petrie dish of intellect and the information stored there provides the agar of learning. But students themselves muster the work necessary to grow understanding.
Until it is clear that a library is the portal of learning, students will be without the means to accomplish their essential, lonely task. Libraries are the common intellectual meeting ground of individualized learners.
Now infuse that scenario with the isolation of the immigrant’s experience. That library becomes the embodiment of the hard task they face bootstrapping knowledge and understanding. That library provides the means for their unbelievably difficult task, just literally and physically in the form of electronic equipment and other tools, but also spiritually in the form of language and information, there for those able to invest their hard work in the effort. That library is the very key to dispelling the immigrant’s disenfranchisement. That library is a dream, sustaining the dream of Dreamers.
When we defund a school’s library, we dismantle the very capacity of the school to conduct its mission. Exterminating librarians defeats the purpose of school itself. When the librarian leaves and the library is starved, we lose our very access to the sustenance of learning and knowledge.
The library is to the school as the pantry is to the cook!
My former district, Sarasota FL, just eliminated all 6-12 librarians as of next year. They eliminated all elementary librarians years ago, so no more k-12 librarians. According to our union, the state of FL is funding the schools at the same level as 10 years ago. I’m guessing the price of gas in the buses, the water bill, the electricity and all the other bills have increased since 2003. We’ve had pay freezes and furloughs and pay cuts. Something has to give, and every year we have to give more. Every year I think we’ve hit rock bottom, yet the bottom keeps dropping out.
Heaven forbid we have a state income tax in FL. It’s better we shut libraries and let teacher pay continue to fall further behind.
Thank you!!!!! I have been deeply discouraged as my own district has sought to eliminate elementary librarians. The administration seems to believe that the school library can thrive without librarians. “The common intellectual meeting ground of individualized learners” does need librarians to ensure that those individuals have the resources and guidance each needs. Indeed, the elimination of the librarian starves the system and it is a sad delusion that tech support and curriculum coordinators can replace librarians who although unmandated are not a luxury in any authentic educational institution.
A district in Utah has just laid off all of its librarians in order to “save money.” http://www.standard.net/stories/2013/04/26/ogden-school-district-notifies-librarians-job-terminations
As a retired school librarian, cut by the Sleazy Deasy cabal running our rapidly deteriorating school district in Los Angeles, I thank you for posting this excellent blog by the Red Queen in LA — a fabulous writer as well. In Los Angeles, we have had credentialed library teachers in elementary schools for a few years only. Now LA is cutting all in middle schools, and funding only some in high schools. California is 50th in funding school libraries. It’s beyond a shame — it’s criminal. We all know that better access to books and free reading choices produces better and life-long readers. Thank you Dr. Stephen Krashen.
Deasy needs to be fired!
http://www.k12newsnetwork.com/2012/04/lausd-superintendent-of-schools-john-deasy-must-go/
In addition to informing us on this blog, please write strongly and often to the LA Times and all other local papers with your absolutely accurate message. We here tend to preach to our supportive choir but this info must be shouted repeatedly to the media so the general public can understand the problem.
My district does not have what I remember as a child “librarians.” We now have integration media specialists who basically work with students to learn how to navigate computers. We don’t have anyone ) except a para to teach kids about books in our library.
School libraries? What are those? Oh, that’s right… I remember. Come to think of it. My school does have a room with a bunch of books in it but the person who staffs it has a full schedule teaching students. I think they used to call these people librarians.
Here is a short article about the Importance of Libraries in a Time When We Need Them. Citations are provided. Hope this is helpful. Link: http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CC/0211-sep2011/CC0211Presidents.pdf
This is soooooo sick. Years ago when I heard teachers complaining about lack of textbooks and no materials I finally compared a superintendents budget, the wish list at the beginning of the year, with the audited actuals at the end of the year. I found that for 10 years LAUSD was budgeting and not spending on those two line items $250,000,000/year. It took a year to convince an L.A. Times reporter Amy Pyle to write the story called “In a Book Bind.” Just before publishing the article the reporter was ordered by management to call me and say this “If you want your name or your non profits name in the article they told me to tell you that they will not publish the article.” I told her immediately publish the article. This resulted in the ground breaking legislation called Schiff-Bustamente which added $1.5 billion for textbooks and instructional materials and supplies over three years. I saw many schools dramatically improve their libraries as a result. I thought great it worked. Then, and I love her phrase, “Sleazy Deasy”, comes along and here we go on the ride again. LAUSD is not the norm in the State of California. It has over $2,000/student funding more than the average Unified School District (K-12) in the State of California according to the California Dept. of Ed. website and the LAUSD budgets. I bust LAUSD on a regular basis on their fraud the biggest being the $27 billion construction bond fund. Sleazy Deasy and Queen Monica, board president, have been caught repeatedly lying about the revenue/student. They even lied testifying at an Assembly Select Committee Hearing on “Preventing School Districts from going into Receivership or Bankruptcy.” They both testified that LAUSD only had $4,800/student when it was $11,233/student. What they did not know at the time was that we were later the last panel to present after they left and that we had given the committee days earlier all the information to be presented so that they would have it in printed form before the hearing. We gave them spreadsheets on 20 school districts going back 10 years. It caused a furor in Sacramento. LAUSD in spite of all of their lies is above the national average and has nothing to do with the norm in California. Facts are an interesting thing. Lies are what they are.
STUDENTS NEED LIBRARIES AND LIBRARIANS. I SURE DID. I READ A LOT NOT JUST SCHOOL DATA. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO BE INTELLIGENT AND TO MAKE GOOD DECISIONS.
…and this is why every single reader of this blog should send Monica Ratliff at least $15 today. Go to her campaign site to read about her. It is imperative that she beat the Villaraigosa/Rhee/Broad shill, Sanches.
Monica needs volunteers who will get out the vote. According to what I read on one of their websites, reformers believe their mistake in the primaries was not having a big enough organization to get out the vote for Sanchez. They will have all of their organizers on the ground this time.
Reblogged this on Carolina Mountain Blue and commented:
Libraries are the heart and soul of any decent functioning public school, whether it be an elementary school, middle or junior high school all the way up to high schools. Take out that heart and soul and you are left with nothing more than a shell, a ghost that can then be corrupted by whatever passing interests come by with the most attention and the most dollars.Put simply, we need school libraries that are well-run, independent of the fiscal bean-counters and willing to, at times, buck the status quo for the good of the students.
Nice way to sandbag the independent learner.
This is a pathetic trend in education. A lot of charters don’t have libraries. I think it highlights how the movement emphasizes money of quality.
Not only are we being told that the elementary librarians are going to be replaced by assistants in my district, our retiring District Librarian is being replaced by someone with absolutely no library experience. Talk about the blind leading the blind. Unfortunately, the ones who suffer in the end will be the kids. A lot of our kids have access to books only through the schools.