Number of School Librarians Remain Stagnant During Recession

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By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 04/14/2010

Although nearly all Americans believe media centers are crucial to a child’s education, funding for library resources dropped during the heart of the recession in 2009, according to the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2010 State of America’s Libraries report.

While the number of media specialists remained stable, according to the report, even small dips in funding reflect the changes many school librarians have witnessed in the past few months of 2010.

“One area of grave concern is schools closing school libraries and eliminating school librarians,” says Cassandra Barnett, president of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), a division of the ALA. “And public libraries are not necessarily equipped to take up the slack.”

Although school libraries were open about 1.5 hours more in 2009 than in 2008, school districts didn’t increase the average number of teachers who are also school librarians, according to the report.

AASL President Cassandra Barnett

And while more than 96 percent of Americans believe that school libraries are an “essential part of the education experience,” according to the report, due to shrinking budgets school districts and state legislatures across the country have been making plans to lay off media specialists, shut school libraries and remove state requirements for school librarians and media centers for the 2010-2011 school year.

These changes concern those in the public library domain as school libraries and the librarians who staff them are uniquely trained to address the needs of students. Still, public libraries have tried to fill in the gaps, so to speak, when they can.

“I think public libraries have more invested in deliberate homework support,” says Sari Feldman, president of the Public Library Association, a division of ALA, and executive director of the Cuyahoga Country Public Library, in the suburbs of Cleveland, OH. “After school programming has

PLA President Sari Feldman

disappeared, we have more two-parent working families, and there’s more demand for services.”

Still, Barnett cautions that the focus of a public library is always going to be on the needs of its larger community, while school libraries are focused specifically on the needs of students. She believes that perhaps school districts could look at areas they deem essential, like technology, which could be scaled back slightly to protect other programs that are being excised.

“They always seem to cut what they consider to be extras in schools, like libraries, art, music,” says Barnett. “And it’s very hard to argue on the other side when they only have a finite amount of money. But we tend to look for an easy answer, a simple fix, so we cross something off our list. Perhaps if we take a little more time, tweak a bit here and there, we could divert some of that funding where maybe it could be more effective.”