I am a retired school librarian and I believe in school libraries. I built up a library collection with minimal funding supplemented by selling used books and lollipops. I automated a library with a computer we bought with supermarket receipts. I put together a computer lab with the help of parent volunteers piecing together discarded computer parts.
Students came in to the library in the morning and during lunch to get what they needed to complete their assignments. A lot of my students didn't have parents who could drive them to a public library. A lot of my students didn't have computers at home.
Library staff positions in my old school district have been cut by more than half. This means, the libraries are open fewer hours. In elementary and middle schools, libraries are open half time now. High schools will get further cuts for next year.
On LM_net, the listserv for school librarians, librarians throughout the country are telling of similar situations in their school systems. Three weeks ago, someone posted a petition in support of school libraries on the White House We The People Website.
So far we're up to 9,450 signatures. Many of the people that I've been urging to sign have told me that they experiencing difficulties getting in to sign. Apparently there's a reason for this:
"Given all the unannounced and unexplained downtime for the White House petition website, the ratio may exceed 1,000:150 for those unlucky petition creators who send out their publicity when the White House website is down. On October 27, 2011, the website was down during business hours for at least one hour. Another day I clocked more than two hours of outages. (Outages may also help explain why in the last 30 days not a single petition that reached the 150 threshold also reached the 25,000 signature threshold, a stark contrast to the first 30 days. The White House provides no acknowledgment, explanation, or statistics for this extraordinary level of outages. Nor have they responded to written complaints. If they did, they might be forced to extend the 30 day deadline for getting signed petitions by at least 10 percent.)"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...?
It will take some kind of Thanksgiving miracle to achieve the 25,000 threshold, but please try to get in to sign it.
http://tinyurl.com/...
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Ensure all school libraries are properly staffed, open, and available for children every day.
Any school receiving Federal funds should be required to have a credentialed School Librarian on staff full time with a library that contains a minimum of 18 books per student. Failure to have a school library open to all students and/or failure to have a credentialed School Librarian to run that library should be punishable by a immediate withdrawal of all Federal monies.
Study after study has shown that well-stocked, well-funded, well-organized school libraries staffed by a "highly qualified" School Librarian, or other similarly qualified credentialed individual, improve student reading scores, test scores, and literacy rates. All children have the right to read and to have access to materials that will help them grow as learners and as people. No Library = No Freedom to Learn