School Library Funding
Dear Editor: This letter is a follow up to views recently expressed by G. L. Hammons regarding the Blatchley Middle School Library, which lost its librarian last fall due to budget cuts and is currently staffed less than four hours per week. It is long-time educators like Ms. Hammons who understand firsthand the positive, data-proven impact school libraries have on student success. Budgetary decision makers would be wise to take such informed perspectives into careful consideration during the next funding cycle.
On Monday, Jan. 28, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Blatchley, Families for School Libraries will host a legislator call-in and letter-writing event where Sitkans can voice support for education funding needed to keep school libraries and other essential resources operating. Whether your priorities include libraries, sports, the arts, or any other school programs that rely on state funding, this is an opportunity to let lawmakers know. All Sitkans are invited to this drop-in event, which will include afternoon snacks and a light dinner. For more information, email FamiliesForSchoolLibraries@gmail.com, call 738-9942, or find us on Facebook.
Gov. Dunleavy and lawmakers will set the new state budget in February, and more cuts to education are anticipated. Join us on Jan. 28 to voice opposition to these cuts and express support for full education funding. Now is the time to influence the future of our schools and the future of our state.
Beth Short-Rhoads,
Stephen Courtright, KK Prussian,
Emily Demmert, Kate Johnson
Families for School Libraries
Librarian’s Role
Dear Editor: Anyone who believes a photo of a young volunteer checking a book out to a Blatchley Middle School student for a few hours a week represents the job of a librarian is testament to what many people, including school administrators, still believe is a librarian’s most important role. He or she couldn’t be more wrong.
It is very nice this young man has volunteered to help in this local crisis, (and another volunteer is there during lunch) and we can thank them for their help.
However, what neither one of them can do is teach students how to choose valid sources for research, and how to incorporate those sources into written and oral discourses. They cannot help students find different kinds of sources for class projects, nor can they illustrate how students could make presentations using the latest and best communication and web-based tools. They cannot teach students how to differentiate between great resources and fake resources, and to discover what agencies may be sponsoring websites.
They do not know the best ways to find out what a student might be interested in when he or she is choosing research topics, nor what might pique a student’s interest for a new book to read for pleasure. They cannot carry on real conversations with students about what they have read, beyond their own experience – yet school librarians can and must, as they read and study all manner of materials every single day. They absolutely have to.
Parents depend on school librarians to open worlds for their children, just as teachers can. Without school librarians, however, teachers, especially English and social studies teachers in middle school and high schools, have to add yet more material to cover in their already over-filled daily lesson plans.
We must recognize today’s school librarian is a professional educator who partners with every teacher, in every subject, in every building, at every level, from pre-school through graduate school. Most teachers are specialists in one or two fields – a school librarian is a specialist in ALL fields, including administration. He or she often has other roles, too, such as developing and running spelling bees, geography contests, etc. for the schools, as our missing Blatchley librarian does.
If any SSD administrator believes he (or she) can do without a professional librarian as a faculty member, and do no real harm to students by closing a library because he has found a volunteer to check out books, he needs to find another career, as he is adding to other teachers’ already too-heavy workloads, failing in his job as an education administrator, and worse and, much more importantly, he is absolutely denying children a full and quality education.
G.L. Hammons, Sitka
