By Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 4/17/2008 9:31:00 AM
Bowing to public opinion, Arizona’s Tucson Unified School District board on April 8 took an abrupt U-turn, voting to reverse its decision to force elementary schools to choose between axing librarians or counselors to save money.
The late-February decision, which essentially pitted librarians and counselors against each other in a battle to save their jobs, would have saved Tucson's largest school district an estimated $1.55 million next year. But the decision was a deeply unpopular one with local community members.
"When it comes down to the school [site], it's becoming a popularity contest," board member Adelita Grijalva explained to the Tucson Citizen. Grijalva’s decision to vote both times in favor of librarians may reflect her roots: She's the daughter of U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), one of the congressional sponsors of theSKILLs Act, which would mandate a certified librarian for every school nationwide.
The original February vote forced elementary schools to decide whether to keep their librarians or counselors, based on a formula of one full-time librarian per school for every 450 or more students.
Sally Lefko, a librarian for four years at Roskruge Bilingual, a K-9 school in Tucson, describes the dismay that followed. "If your school had [a half-time librarian], you had to choose: either a half-time librarian or half-time counselor. It was like kicking someone 'off the island. But it wasn't like a stranger on a TV show; these were your colleagues, people you ate lunch with and saw every day."
Ten schools voted in favor of counselors over librarians, says Lefko, a part-time librarian at an elementary and middle school. She was retained by the middle school, but voted out by the elementary faculty, which chose to keep their counselor. "I think they figured I was going to be there half time for the middle school so I would probably [still] serve them."
Oddly enough, Lefko says, the school board didn't realize that librarians and counselors remained on the payroll even though their positions were eliminated and that the only way to save dollars was by attrition. The practical result was that those dismissed from a school were given DITs or district-initiated transfers. Lefko herself opted to stay part-time at her middle school because she suspected the new policy wouldn't last.
She was right. Ann-Eve Pedersen and her Tucson Unified School Supporters mobilized, and about 50 protestors showed up at the school board building before the April 8 meeting. Lefko, who dressed for the occasion as a grim reaper—her costume adorned with the letters TUSS—read her public letter to the board condemning their action to pit “us against each other” and reduce “the morale in the entire school district."
In the end, the board voted to reinstate the district's previous counselor/librarian staffing plan but to increase the formula to 600 kids per school minimum per full-time (versus part-time) librarian. The result, says Lefko, is that "There is no library without a librarian, at least part-time."
