Another spring, another round of library cuts?

Forget robins and crocuses. Here's how you tell it is spring.

Yesterday was National School Library Day. And the day before that, School Library Journal published an article "Fighting Cuts: How to Keep Librarians in Schools." 

In the article, Elissa Malespina, president of International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Librarians Network, outlines some strategies she learned when undertaking a successful effort to restore three librarian positions and library budgets in her New Jersey district. Her advice is excellent. Read it even if you think your library position is safe this year.

Sadly, library cuts seem to have been a part of spring for my entire 40 year career in the field. In 2004, I wrote an article similar to the SLJ piece for our state school library association's journal, Minnesota Media, called "When Your Job is on the Line." It contained frighteningly similar advice to that given by Malespina 14 years later. Not sure what this says about the learning capacity of our profession!

What the article did include is a conclusion about the prevention of job and program cuts. It read:

Prevention

Of course, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Ongoing efforts can make your library media program less likely to be the target of budget reductions. Make sure you are already doing the things below.

1. Building and maintaining a library media program that teaches critical information and technology literacy skills, builds student literacy rates, and supports all classrooms and curricular areas.
2. Serving the needs of your teaching and administrative staff through instructional collaboration, technology training and support, and their own professional materials request fulfillment.
3. Establishing or continuing a school library media program advisory committee comprised of a wide range of stakeholders (especially parents) that meets on a regular basis to discuss goals, policies, and budgets.
4. Creating long-term goals and annual objectives that are supported by the principal and teachers and are directly tied to your building’s goals. Enacting long-range plans and multi-year strategies or projects makes it difficult to change horses in midstream.
5. Building a relationship with your principal that is mutually supportive.
6. Tracking and reporting to your administrator the use of your library media program, especially in terms of units of teaching, collaboration, and specific skills you yourself teach.
7. Communicating regularly and formally with administrators, teachers, students, parents and the community about what is happening in your library program, through newsletters and e-mail; and communicating informally through e-mails and notes to individuals on “I thought you’d like to know about this…” topics.
8. Having an ongoing involvement with your parent-teacher organizations.
9. Serving on leadership, curriculum, technology and staff development teams in your building and district.
10. Being active in your teacher professional organization and reminding officers that as a dues-paying member, you deserve as much support as the classroom teacher.
11. Being involved in the extra-curricular life of the school, attending school plays, sporting events, award ceremonies etc. Be visible! (I think it helps to be an active member of the community belonging to a church or other religious organization, community service group, and/or volunteer groups. It’s harder to fire a friend and neighbor than a stranger.)
12. Being active in MEMO by attending conferences and regional events, reading the MEMOrandom and Minnesota Media publications, volunteering for positions in the organization, and attending MEMO/MLA legislative functions.

You as a school library media specialist are too important to too many children to let budget reductions that impact your program just “happen.” Get active, ask for support, and heed the words of Dylan Thomas – “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

I hope people listen more carefully to Malespina than they did to me. I want my great-grandchildren to have school libraries and especially school librarians.