Schools Eliminating Librarians as Budgets Shrink (NYT)

[somone]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/nyregion/schools-eliminating-librarians-as-budgets-shrink.html

In Lean Times, Schools Squeeze Out Librarians
By FERNANDA SANTOS

Budget belt-tightening threatens to send school librarians the way of the card catalog.

The schools superintendent in Lancaster, Pa., said he had to eliminate 15 of the district’s 20 librarians to save full-day kindergarten classes.

In the Salem-Keizer school district in Oregon, all 48 elementary and middle school librarians would lose their jobs under a budget proposal that faces a vote next week.

In Illinois’s School District 90, which spans several rural and suburban communities in the southern part of the state, parent volunteers have been running the libraries in the district’s seven schools since September, in what the schools superintendent, Todd Koehl, described as “a last-ditch effort” to avoid closing their doors...

[sakabatou]

1. Next on the hit list, libraries themselves

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. I've told librarians for years that they need to be certified to teach as well

They are almost always the first to go when budgets are cut and staff is laid off.

[MountainLaurel]

4. Many school librarians already are

In a lot of states I've lived in, you have to be certified to teach in that state, as well as having your master's in library science, to work as a school librarian/media specialist.

[Tennessee Gal]

3. Libraries, physical education, art, music, theatre, clubs ...

sports programs, etc.

All benefit our children and grandchildren, but they are at risk in this economy. Meanwhile Republicans fight to make sure the rich get richer. What's wrong with this picture?