Librarians Are A Luxury Chicago Public Schools Can't Afford
Two years ago, the Chicago Public Schools budgeted for 454 librarians. Last year, the budget called for 313 librarians, and now that number is down to 254.
With educators facing tough financial choices, having a full-time librarian is becoming something of a luxury in Chicago's more than 600 public schools.
It's not that there's a shortage of librarians in Chicago, and it's not mass layoffs — it's that the librarians are being reassigned.
"The people are there, they're just not staffing the library, they're staffing another classroom," says Megan Cusick, a librarian at Nancy B. Jefferson Alternative School. She says all across the district, certified librarians are being reassigned to English classrooms, world languages or to particular grade levels in elementary schools.
"We got down to the point of saying well, we have a classroom and it doesn't have a teacher," says Scott Walter, a parent at Nettlehorst Elementary on the city's north side — a popular school in the upper-middle class Lakeview neighborhood on the city's North Side.
He says when the district stopped funding specific positions and let principals and school council's decide how to spend their money, the numbers weren't adding up.
"Here's the position and she can be in a library or we can have a teacher in front of 30 kids. And no matter how much you love libraries, and as much as I do, you can't have a classroom without a teacher in front of it," Walter says.
Ultimately, Nettlehorst had to move its librarian, who is also a certified teacher, into a fourth grade classroom.
In the state of Illinois, all librarians must also have teaching certifications, and most have endorsements to teach specific grades and subjects.
There's also no required amount of minutes for library instruction in the state of Illinois, so schools won't face any repercussions if they don't have a librarian or a school library.
Scott Walter says Nettlehorst students are still able to check out books, because the clerk and parent volunteers help staff it. Still, he says, it's a lose-lose.
Scott Walter says Nettlehorst students are still able to check out books, because the clerk and parent volunteers help staff it. Still, he says, it's a lose-lose.
"It feels again as a parent, it feels that CPS has set us up into a situation where we have to Librarians Are A Luxury Chicago Public Schools Can't Afford : NPR Ed : NPR:
