By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 9/4/2008
School libraries in Mesa, AZ, don’t look the same this fall. That’s because more than half of last year’s media specialists are gone, leaving only 31 certified librarians to serve a total of 87 schools.
Some 47 teacher-librarians either retired or were reassigned to classrooms as part of the Mesa Public School Board’s decision last June to eliminate all school librarians over a three-year period.
By comparison, 78 Mesa schools had certified librarians last year, says Ann Dutton Ewbank, a librarian at Arizona State University and the key organizer of the Fund Our Future Arizona movement to save the district’s media specialists.
“That leaves Mesa with librarians in 31 schools,” says Dutton Ewbank. “And those librarians will be phased out by 2011.” The plan to get rid of media specialists—which was met by fierce opposition by library supporters—is intended save $1.2 million every year for three years to offsett a $20 million budget deficit.
So who’s running those Mesa school libraries now? Library aides. In fact, says Dutton Ewbank, by the 2010-2011 school year “all libraries will be operated by aides.”
And that’s unacceptable to her, she says. “No amount of training or scripted lessons can replace the expertise of a certified teacher-librarian in guiding students to find and use the right information at the right time,” Dutton Ewbank adds. “One of the key tenets of Information Power is that skills should not be taught in isolation. Replacing certified teacher-librarians with aides takes resources out of students’ hands and may negatively impact student achievement.”
The Fund Our Future Arizona movement is modeled after the Spokane Moms—Lisa Layera Brunkan, Susan McBurney, and Denette Hill—three women who worked tirelessly to obtain state funding for school librarians—and succeeded earlier this year by convincing legislators to allocate $4 million in library funds for the 2008–2009 academic year.
Fund Our Future Arizona plans to solicit state lawmakers to introduce legislation after the November general election, using Washington’s legislation as a model.
“We hope that legislators will be responsive to introducing legislation that requires a certified teacher-librarian in every school, with an appropriation to support the endeavor,” says Dutton Ewbank..
Arizona doesn’t have dedicated funds for school libraries or mandate-certified media specialists at any grade. School libraries and librarians are controlled at the district level, not by the state Department of Education, which means that when funds are scarce, librarians are typically the first on the chopping block, says Dutton Ewbank, adding that state funding would have ensured a “dedicated funding stream” for school librarians.
