East Marion Elementary School in Silver Springs, FL.

Starting this fall, all of the Marion County Public School’s remaining 15 certified media specialists support two schools each. Each school has their librarian on site for two days, with the third day handled as a flex day, meaning librarians can spend the time at either school. The arrangement has taken adjustment for librarians trying to juggle two separate spaces since classes started August 19—but also for students who now have considerably less library instruction.

“It has been very difficult because of sharing schools,” Miriam Needham, the district’s coordinator of library media services, tells School Library Journal.  “It’s not really possible to have an effective program when you’re not there five days a week.”

The new schedule started for some school librarians in the district three years ago, Needham says. As librarians retired or moved away, their positions were frozen, and other librarians were assigned their elementary school campuses. Seven school librarians had already been sharing 14 schools even before the start of this new fall term, Needham notes.

This latest shift in how school librarians were assigned schools started in May, when Superintendent George Tomyn announced that the district was facing a $29 million budget shortfall. That led to 261 layoffs across Marion County. School librarians kept their jobs in the middle and high schools, but lost their clerks and assistants—positions that still remain at the elementary school level, as they help to maintain the library by checking books in and out.

“But that’s really all she can do,” says Susan Dunn, a certified library media specialist at East Marion Elementary School and Anthony Elementary School, of her assistant.

Dunn, who was the full-time librarian at East Marion for 21 years, now spends Wednesday through Friday at that campus with its 700 students, and just Monday and Tuesday at Anthony Elementary with its 350 students. In her 22nd year as a school librarian, Dunn has now jettisoned story time, much of her research lessons, and collaboration time with teachers.

“What I really crave is to be able to have a closer relationship with the kids,” she says. Because when they don’t see me, they don’t know me, and I don’t really know them.”

Anthony Elementary is in its fourth year of having a shared librarian—a different media specialist each year. Dunn is the fourth, and says she is having a hard time getting to know the students and staff, as she’s not as integrated into the curriculum as she would like to be.

“They may be a little gun shy,” she says. “There is a whole group of students I haven’t been introduced to because I’m not there when they come to the library. There’s an assistant checking out books. They come for 20 minutes, and out they go.”

Needham says that the administration’s plan is to restore the cut positions, and not permanently leave the sharing as it is. But that all depends on funding, she says.

In the meantime, librarians like Dunn will continue to set forth twice a week to different school sites, trying to help students at both. Sometimes that means leaving emails unanswered—there were more than 1100 that were unanswered the last time she checked her account. And even as she forges back and forth she knows she and her students aren’t the only one adjusting.

“This is really difficult for the library assistants because they have to put up with another new person, a new personality,” says Dunn. “At Anthony I moved all books from one side to another, moved bulletin boards around, threw things out. The poor assistant is so stressed because the last three librarians did the same thing. I feel bad about it even though I keep moving things around and throwing things away. But that’s a phenomenon that’s happening all over the county.”

In the Sarasota County School District, all high school and middle school media specialists have been cut for the 2013–2014 school year, according to Gary Leatherman, communication director for Sarasota County Schools. Of the 12 positions, 10 took teaching assignments, and two were hired in roles where they will now coordinate scheduling, testing and progress, he says. Aides will now staff the media centers. Sarasota cut its elementary school media specialist position in 2010.

Marion County Public Schools has cut 15 of its 30 elementary school librarian positions for the 2013-2014 school year, although 11 of those positions had been vacant due to a hiring freeze for the last three years, according to Kevin Christian, the district’s public relations officer. The remaining 15 professional media specialists have been assigned two schools each, and will be staffing these locations with the help of paraprofessionals.

In Pasco County, the school district has done away with the media specialist role and created a new position called an “information communication technology literacy coach,” according to Linda E. Cobbe, director, communications and government relations for the district school board of Pasco County. Former media specialists have since been “hired for the new positions or were placed in other classrooms or appropriate jobs,” Cobbe tells School Library Journal.

Although retaining jobs is laudable, putting media specialists inside the classroom is not an ideal solution, says Lynette Mitchell, a library media specialist for the past 22 years, 13 of those years at Crystal River High School in Crystal River, FL.

“People with tenure can’t be let go,” says Mitchell of why she believes many media specialists around the state are being re-assigned. “But putting people who have no classroom experience and haven’t been teaching the curriculum into classrooms with 20–25 kids?”

Elementary and middle school media specialists had been potentially on the chopping block for the 2013–2014 school year to help close a $2 million budget gap in her district of Citrus County, FL, Mitchell says. But, like in other counties, the roles were re-named. Now “teacher on special assignment/media” is the new title, which means the position could now be staffed by a teacher with a media center background—but it also could be filled by someone who is just out of school, says Mitchell. A request for comment to the Citrus County School District was not returned.

“I think they want to change the name because they wouldn’t have to keep the person who was presently in that position,” Mitchell says. “We have tenure. We have a special services contract. It opens the door to yearly people. If you’re not grandfathered in, you’re always on an annual contract.”

On a positive note, Mitchell has not yet heard of any media specialists in her district who have yet been let go or re-assigned, and school board members tell her they do not want to see these new positions on the cutting block. “They said, when budgets come up, they want media specialists’ jobs off the table,” Mitchell says. “This should be the last time we have to look at it.”

However, she admits, “Board members change. So we never know.”