Mike Klonsky tells the sad story of a school in Chicago that lost its librarian to budget cuts. Some parents want to staff the library with volunteers, but the union objects to replacing professionals with volunteers. The irony in this case is that the school is named for a Chicago billionaire.
“The state’s schools have been operating without a school budget for the past two years. Gov. Rauner has been holding the budget hostage, hoping to leverage his signature for a pound of flesh, meaning a cut in retiree pensions, the elimination of teacher collective-bargaining rights, and more privatization of school services.
“There are currently hundreds of Chicago public schools operating without properly-staffed libraries, school nurses, special-ed paras or school social workers. Librarians are vital to the functioning of any school. If wealthy, mainly-whte suburban schools did away with librarians, replacing them with untrained, unpaid volunteers, there would be a parent revolt.
“From DNAinfo:
“Rachel Lessem, a member of the local school council at Pritzker, said each student used to have an hour of library a week, where they learned how to research, how to use databases and how to access other sources of information. The students had homework and grades in library as well
In Chicago’s two-tier, racially re-segregated school system, libraries and librarians are considered fluff, wasteful add-ons that are the first to go in times of crisis….”
“Another bit of irony… The school is named after the late Chicago billionaire A.N. Pritzker. The Pritzker family, owners of the Hyatt Hotel chain, is one of the city’s most powerful families and notoriously anti-union. Penny Pritzker, now Obama’s Commerce Secretary, was previously hand-picked by Rahm to sit on the school board. She voted for the mass school closings.
“The irony is that if the Pritzkers and the other city oligarchs paid their fair share of taxes, Pritzker Elementary would still have its librarian and then some.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Unpaid volunteers are problematic. Maybe they’ll show up and maybe they won’t . Maybe they know something useful about libraries maybe they don’t.
You need a Master’s Degree to be a Certified School Library Media Soecialist and most have an undergraduate degree as a teacher or in a specialized subject area.
Now tell me – would you want an unpaid volunteer teaching your children in the regular classroom? As a gym teacher? Art teacher? Music teacher? Principal?
Why would you put a volunteer in charge of thousands of dollars worth of books and equipment? And who is going to maintain the collection, order and process new books, update the computers, and make sure the books are appropriately signed out and returned in a timely manner then put in the proper location on the shelf? Are they also expected to teach lessons? Conduct storytime?
Perhaps there is a good reason why the union is against this idea.
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Omg! I guess this is S—cago politics one more time!
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Any district or union that thinks paras or volunteers can replace certified librarians should be called out. Further, any district or union that allows it to happen deserves what they get.
Thank you, CTU for standing up for what is right. In our designed-to-fail educational system, this is another way of eliminating important support systems and then blaming those left without for not meeting rigorous, college and career ready expectations.
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These parents are well meaning – let’s put that front and center. The basic injustice they are pursuing is that they see these materials as their community’s, and, it is a basic clerical function to circulate books from the shelves to the students.
Now, in the running of the school, let’s apply this argument to anything else they want for their children. Substitute almost any materials you believe would benefit students and put in place unpaid volunteers.
Let’s say the volunteers are even vetted -background checks etc. and no one is concerned about who the children are exposed to.
Who is maintaining the administrative access for who is allowed to check materials out of that library? Who is responsible if a ton of materials suddenly go missing?
But wait let’s say even that’s not a problem – let’s turn to the collection. Right now the books are just sitting on the shelves right? They belong to the school community? True – but no one is MAINTAINING that collection – parents will get to pull books off shelves they don’t agree with – they will get to challenge students who are checking out a book they believe is unacceptable. They may promote materials that shares an ideology they agree with but is inappropriate for students.
That would HURT students.
The collection would also (rather quickly too) fall out of date, likely have no one able to process new materials into the collection, and selection of materials to meet the many inquiry and independent reading needs of students would cause the quality of the collection they want access to now, to spiral downwards.
There is a cost to their students, there is a cost to the school for repairing the library’s collection if the volunteers don’t maintain it well, and there is a precedent for calling librarians unskilled clerks (and other school professionals) and replacing them with whoever is unskilled that wants to be there because someone (or a group of someones) decided that position is no longer skilled even if decades of research contradict that (and even more recent research).
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My letter to the WSJ:
To the Editor:
Michael K. Hendershot’s “The Library Lockout at Our Elementary School” (Jan. 7-8) claims that union rules prevent parent volunteers from providing library services to elementary students. As a librarian for 18 years, I assure him that while there may be those who think that school librarianship is so simple that anyone can do it, this is not the case. I know what my students have lost without a school librarian, and they know, too.
School librarians are certified teachers uniquely positioned to guide each student in independent reading choices as they grow from pre-readers to confident learners. School librarians have specialized expertise in collection development, collaboration and information literacy. They provide much more than a book coming home in a backpack.
Parent volunteers should not run school library programs. Taking over the jobs of certified teachers because a community is unwilling to pay for these positions hurts students. Unions protect more than jobs when they assert that librarianship is the work of professionals; they protect our students.
Susan Polos
Immediate Past President, New York Library Association Section of School Librarians
Katonah, NY
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Thank you Susan for your letter. I’ll never forget my mom taking us to the local library in Tennnerton when us kids were in elementary school. I ended up reading something like 106 books in 3rd or 4th grade because of my mom. I remember reading a number of Hardy Boys books, Tarzan, Guinness Books of World Records, and so forth. Incidentally, my mom went back to grad school when all seven of us kids left, got her teaching degree, and taught kindergarten for a number of years. Then she did Project Literacy for a number of years. She was my inspiration to become a teacher.
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Thanks for that Susan. We are all upset about the anti-union spin on this article when really the anger should be directed at a district that is systematically robbing children of essential services.
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spolos: you went right to the heart of the matter.
And let’s take this one rheephorm step forward: when CPS can’t “afford” enough maintenance workers, why not get volunteers? Not enough cooks or security guards or SpecEd TAs or clerical staff or PE instructors or school psychologists? Volunteers! Not enough teachers? If TFAs can do it, why not go that extra 3DM [Data-DrivenDecisionmaking] mile and get volunteers!
Everything is so so easy when you have the proper bidness-minded attitude. No floor is too low to reach when it’s OTHER PEOPLES CHILDREN…
Although when it comes to themselves and THEIR OWN CHILDREN, rumor has it that U of Chicago Lab Schools [e.g., Arne Duncan {also an alum} and Rahm’s children] aren’t going to adopt that disruptively creative solution.
Who coulda predicted?
😎
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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Well, if the union doesn’t want to allow volunteers, it they go to electronic materials it makes it easier to keep the collection updated, as well as items from “going missing” is not going to be an issue either, and can make it easier to administer too.
And if physical books are desired, the district could look into seeing what options are available for library loans/inter-library loans, and then any loss and update of the paper collections falls onto the public library to maintain.
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I know that I am being unkind but I will try to be polite. M, you are trying to reinvent school library services. Please stop. You are clueless.
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Forgive me for thinking outside the box Ms Cartwheel. No problem, instead go without any librarian services then vs considering any alternative options regarding how a district might still provide services, just because it’s not what the traditional solution previously was. So silly of somebody to think differently regarding options that might still work… Ie- Rotating the finite number of librarians through the district, having access to a remote librarian through web conferencing, using alternative formatted textbooks vs traditional printed texts which would be more of a universal design model that all students could benefit from, etc… Yep, ok, I’m the one that’s totally clueless.
It must be nice to be living in a bubble like many of you all seem to live and work in on this site.
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It is possible to have classrooms without teachers and libraries without librarians, but it is a very bad idea.
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“using alternative formatted textbooks vs traditional printed texts”
Hmmm and in Chicago or Philadelphia or Poor Dunk, NC where are the funds for these alternative textbooks going to come from? How will the lower class, under served students use them at home?
I had children that didn’t eat when they didn’t go to school. There are children like that everywhere. The schools in these areas don’t have the financial resources for students to have the technology. Children love technology and engaging with it. They are fearless. Technology is awesome but it ain’t cheap.
Books can be reused for years. They don’t use too much energy and don’t need to be updated to the latest soft ware. Dropping a book in a puddle will ruin it but other oops moments are usually salvageable. Just dropping technology can kill it. Who will pay for it? Whose little behind will get torn up when the folks get the bill?
Things are changing all of the time. There may come a day when technology will be less expensive than paper. Right now I don’t see it as the solution to under funded or non existent physical libraries.
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Different M that is not me – rotating librarians means the librarians don’t know the collections or student populations they are serving – much less the students in the building nor can they collaborate easily, and a decent part of their day can be spent moving from building to building, or if they go to a building a day, they will have next to no relationship with the staff and students.
Remote access to a librarian is not the answer because that lends itself to a reference model (which is apparently how you see librarians) and isn’t instructional, and doesn’t sit with a child and help them create new code, robotics or lego solutions, doesn’t let the librarian monitor the space or respond to students on anything other than an “ask for help basis”.
Public libraries do, do inter-library loans with schools in some places – but that is a supplement to the collection, not a replacement for the professional.
We know students respond differently to printed text than e-text, plus, e-text is still very expensive (and sometimes 2-3x the cost of a physical book).
Alternative textbooks? You mean OER maybe? Open educational resources? These do not replace buying copyrighted and complete materials and can be good for non-fiction but doesn’t supplant or replace independent reading materials. Nor are libraries about textbook materials to begin with.
Please visit your local school library and see what happens there – the vision I see you having of school libraries is a little antiquated
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“If wealthy, mainly-whte suburban schools did away with librarians, replacing them with untrained, unpaid volunteers, there would be a parent revolt.”
But of course if wealthy suburban schools that are not mainly white did the same, there would not be any parent revolt.
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Who needs books when iPads have iBooks and are the iCivil Rights of the i21st Century? Who needs libraries anyhow when there’s so much test prep to do? I say burn the books and give the students penny vouchers to use their library time at Walmart or Amazon instead. Families need choices. Walmart gives them choices. This all makes sense.
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When are people in the city of Chicago going to realize that Rahm Emanual is the creep who is destroying Chicago single handily!!!! This maniac loser has destroyed the city and somehow he is STILL THERE!!!!! A word to the people of Chicago…get rid of Rahm Emanual and you will begin to see a better, safer city rather than the hell hole that Rahm has created and not to mention that Chicago boasts itself now as the murder capital of the world!! Oh by the way, the only reason Rahm Emanual is in office is because his buddy Barrack Hussein Obama put him there any wonder why the city is a shit house now?
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Running a library is actually very complicated, and requires several different areas of competencies, such as: cataloguing and organizing materials, managing student use of the resources, and being familiar with the many technological aspects that are part of libraries. Why should parents be in a position of having to staff their school library with volunteers. Policymakers need to understand how pathetic, and embarrassing it is that conditions like this exist in our schools. A race to the bottom.
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What’s next, volunteer parent substitutes for nurses? What could possibly go wrong?
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By coincidence I posted the following essay on my own blog. It explains my own experience as a school principal and my belief that a good school ;librarian is essential.
Joanne Yatvin
A few years ago when I was visiting elementary schools regularly in order to do research on the teaching of reading and writing in mixed language classrooms, I often passed a school library and peeked in. Almost always, the library was well stocked and orderly but also empty of students and a librarian. Although I was saddened to see libraries that way, I was not surprised. Back in 1998, when I was still a school principal in Oregon, our school district eliminated elementary school librarians because of the tight budget situation, but also I suspect, because of officials’ ignorance about the important role of libraries in students’ learning.
Fortunately, at our school we were able to replace the librarian with an instructional aide who had worked with her for quite a while. She knew how to manage books, computers, and children, and I gave her full reign. But I wasn’t able to pay her a librarian’s salary or have her work full time. A couple of years after I retired in 2000, I heard that she was leaving her job to continue her education and become a certified librarian. I am sure she is still doing a great job at a fortunate school somewhere.
Over my 12 years at that school, and the previous 13 years when I was a school principal in Wisconsin, the library was the heart of our school. In those times all elementary schools had librarians, and all classes were scheduled to visit the library for a full period once a week. Traditionally, a librarian would introduce students to high quality new books or classics by reading aloud or spend time teaching students how to use the library to find whatever materials they wanted. At my school teachers could also sign up to have small groups visit the library at open periods to find materials to support the topics they were studying or explore new interests with the librarian’s help. Also, once a month teacher teams from each grade would meet with the librarian to identify the materials and assistance they needed for the units students would be working on next. They might also suggest new materials for the library that would help students with their learning.
In addition, our school libraries were open for thirty minutes during the noon hour so students could exchange a book or just browse instead of being on the playground. We felt that this extra opportunity was important because most students came and went on school busses and could not visit the library before or after school.
Although our library spending was high at both schools, we had no budget problems because our spending for classroom materials was very low. We did not buy textbooks or workbooks for students. The only classroom materials we purchased were paperback books, matched as far as possible to the units teachers would be teaching. Surprisingly, those paperbacks usually lasted several years, needing only a little scotch tape to hold their covers together.
As far as I know, our devotion to making the library the heart of our schools was—and still is–exceptional. Yet, because it worked in so many ways, not only for students but also for teachers and our budget, I recommend something similar to current schools, even though I doubt their freedom to make it happen in these times of one-size-fits–all learning and high stakes testing. At the very least, however, all elementary schools should have a strong library and a wise librarian.
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