LISNews: Librarian News

Tanya writes \"The Granite School District Board of Education in Salt Lake City, UT has voted to eliminate school librarian positions if the local teachers association requests a pay raise over 1.4%. Have the board members been watching the Sopranos to brush up on their strongarm tactics? This is the classic, \"If you do what I say, I won\'t shoot the girl\" scenario. According to the Board Report, if the teachers association wants higher raises, the 35 librarians will be moved to teaching positions and the media centers will be staffed with media \"assistants\" who will be paid hourly. The claim is that this move will save $1 million dollars (imagine Dr. Evil\'s glee!)

To read the report visit granite.k12.ut.us
then click on BOARD REPORT about halfway down the page.
\"

Someone passed along This Link to a release that states, in part:\"the Department of Education will not be including any \"specialists\" in the Excellent Teaching Program (national certification & mentoring program). The Department has taken the position that the Statute that established the program was not intended to include teachers who did not have a full time class asigned to them.\"

I remember when I went to library school, one of my professors said how much easier it would be to find a position in the school media branch of our profession than anywhere else, and how much more secure those positions were. It seems, however, that lately we\'re reading an awful lot to contradict that. Here\'s another one.

LGordon writes \"A new program to help provide new library books for the schools in Clark County, Nevada, is underway. Clark County Reads aims to help provide library books for the children of Las Vegas. In Clark County, school libraries provide an average of 7 books per student, while the national average is 18. With only $7.00 per student allocated for library expenditures, it is difficult for schools to purchase an adequate number of books to replace the aged books on the shelves\"

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Editorial and the Full Story