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Issue 83 Can Our Schools Really Get Along Without Librarians?
In response to the current school funding crisis, the Healdsburg Unified
School District is considering making severe cuts to current programs,
including cutting all school librarians by 80 percent, which would be
almost as bad as cutting them altogether. Such a severe cut would
virtually close our libraries. The district agrees that all of the
proposed cuts are disagreeable, but this one seems to be particularly
so. What would the schools be like without librarians?
From a secondary student's viewpoint -
- Loss of a general resource for finding information that is appropriate
for the schools’ grade levels.
- Loss of an advisor to help them find their way among the vast array of
materials in the library.
- Loss of an experienced reader who can recommend the best books for a
particular project.
- Loss of access to computers for word processing, researching, printing
(many students don't have computers, or their computer isn't working, or
their printer isn't working). There is literally no where else in the
school for them to go - the library's lab is supervised and maintained
and always there.
- Loss of a source of recreational reading, and extended reading for
classes.
- Loss of a safe place to "hang" with friends, where no one is judged
and no one feels or looks out of place while reading or doing homework.
- Loss of a warm friendly place to go before school, beginning at
7:30am, at break, and at lunch.
From an elementary student’s viewpoint –
- Loss of an opportunity to learn to love reading, being able to select
from wonderful, age-appropriate books as part of the regular school day.
- Loss of guidance on how to value and care for books.
- Loss of basic information about how to do research, how the Dewey
Decimal System works and how a library is organized.
- Loss of grade level/reading level appropriate resources available for
research projects such as Class assigned book reports, science projects
etc.
From the school's viewpoint:
- Loss of textbooks! With no one overseeing textbook management, the
losses would be staggering, and we would soon be short texts and out of
compliance with state regulations guaranteeing a text for every student.
Teachers can hand out books, but are not able to collect books knowing
what a student should be turning in. With class changes, students
transferring out of the school - it would be impossible to know who has
what, unless the management is centralized, managed by a computer
program or an individual, as we do it now.
- Loss of select up-to-date information and current books - there would
no one to order them.
- No one to help a teacher set up a research project using library
resources.
- No one to teach students how to use a library, how to Internet search
effectively and critically, how to differentiate between "good" and
"bad" information.
- The gradual and eventual loss of thousands of dollars in resources -
books and technology - which would be "borrowed" and not returned,
nevermore available to the students and teachers.
Some may say that the public library can replace the school library, but
it's not so, and the public library would be the first to agree. School
library resources are chosen to support the curriculum, and the public
library can't, and shouldn't, do this. And not all students have easy
access to the public library.
This is an intolerable scenario and we can’t let it happen in the
Healdsburg schools. The district is currently working in a variety of
ways to prevent this from happening. We will keep you informed about the
best ways to help. Information is posted regularly on the district
website at www.husd.com. An
Adopt donation for the district libraries can always be made through HEF
at www.hefschools.com or
to P. O. Box 1668, Healdsburg, CA 95448.
In addition, each school has prepared a Suggestion Box that is available
for students, staff and parents to make suggestions or observations
related to the current crisis. Or the public is welcome to send
comments, questions, and suggestions to
communication@husd.com.
Messages received will be routed to the appropriate person or committee.
This article was written with the generous assistance of 3 HUSD
librarians (Carol Peterson, Linda Cameron and Cindy Twiddy) and HHS
English teacher Brent Mortensen.
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