NANCY BAILEY: The Racism Behind Firing Librarians and Closing School Libraries

The Racism Behind Firing Librarians and Closing School Libraries

The Racism Behind Firing Librarians and Closing School Libraries

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.  ~Frederick Douglass

If a school has no school library or a flimsy excuse for a library, students are denied access to books and reading material. They miss opportunities to learn information and become proud of who they are. Look for racism behind the decision.

When school districts diminish school libraries and those who run them, they fail to address the critical issues involving history, civics, and race relations. With all the talk of schools and equity, it’s unconscionable that closing school libraries and firing school librarians are accepted practices.

In May 2020, the Washington D.C. school district passed a $70 million budget increase. In January 2021, the American Rescue Plan infused over $368 million of COVID relief and new aid to DC Schools. Today, school librarians there are begging to keep their jobs. Here’s the petition!

The dismal account of dwindling libraries and librarians is happening across the nation, especially in poor schools and schools with children of color. If your child’s school CONTINUE READING: The Racism Behind Firing Librarians and Closing School Libraries

CURMUDGUCATION: Donors Choose Monday: Expanding the Library

CURMUDGUCATION: Donors Choose Monday: Expanding the Library

Donors Choose Monday: Expanding the Library

This week's project is exactly the sort of thing that shouldn't be on donors choose. 

Mrs. Gibson is an elementary teacher in South Carolina, and she's looking to expand her classroom library.

My students are living in a low income area where literacy is our focus in order to meet the needs they may not be receiving at home.

My focus is to bring in books that we help them connect with other cultures within the world and the school setting to help them become culturally competent and aware.

A classroom teacher should not have to go begging for books, and yet, here we are. I've made this comparison before--tips should not be a necessary part of a food server's income, but if I refuse to tip as a protest against the system, I'm just being a jerk and the people who get hurt are not the people perpetuating the system. 

So my dream is a world in which South Carolina funds public education properly and Mrs. Gibson and all the teachers like her have the classroom libraries they need. But in the meantime I can either complain about the problem or take a simple step to improve even one small corner of the universe. So I'm giving a tiny little donation to this project, and I encourage you to do the same.

CURMUDGUCATION: Donors Choose Monday: Expanding the Library

Every Year We Hold Schools Accountable for Test Scores in Reading, but Recessionary Cuts Threaten Jobs of the Nation’s School Librarians | janresseger

Every Year We Hold Schools Accountable for Test Scores in Reading, but Recessionary Cuts Threaten Jobs of the Nation’s School Librarians | janresseger

Every Year We Hold Schools Accountable for Test Scores in Reading, but Recessionary Cuts Threaten Jobs of the Nation’s School Librarians

We think we’ve learned the important lessons, but how quickly we forget.

Americans spent 2018 and 2019 learning from teachers as, ten years after the Great Recession, they launched strikes from West Virginia to Oklahoma to Arizona to Kentucky to North Carolina to Virginia to California to Illinois. States had slashed funding for public schools as tax revenues collapsed during the 2008 recession, and after a decade, the majority of states were still spending less on public education than they did before the collapse. Teachers struck to protest the deplorable conditions in which their students were being expected to learn: outrageous class sizes of 35 and 40 student along with shortages of counselors, school social workers, school psychologists, certified librarians, and school nurses. In Los Angeles, Oakland, and Chicago, striking teachers exposed our society’s absence of political will to fund the urban school districts that serve our poorest children.

Here we are now, because of COVID-19, in the midst of another recession. And again today, states are cutting per-pupil basic aid for public schools as tax revenues collapse. But somehow all the medical challenges of the pandemic and the attendant broader economic problems have blinded too many of our leaders to the coming crisis for our schools as budget cuts will again mean the losses of teachers, counselors, school psychologists, school social workers, certified librarians, and school nurses. The meaning of these losses will, of course, become clearer once schools reopen without these essential professionals.

An Education Week article about the pending loss of school personnel caught my eye last week. The headline screams bad news, As COVID-19 Budget Cuts Loom, Relevance of School Librarians Put to the Test.  I suppose I noticed this article because it seems to contradict reality.  How could school librarians ever be considered irrelevant?

My own children are now adults, but when they were young, children’s librarians mattered very much to our family.  These were the librarians at our elementary and middle school and CONTINUE READING: Every Year We Hold Schools Accountable for Test Scores in Reading, but Recessionary Cuts Threaten Jobs of the Nation’s School Librarians | janresseger