Librarians Are A Luxury Chicago Public Schools Can’t Afford

Headline of a piece on NPR – Librarians Are A Luxury Chicago Public Schools Can’t Afford

Excerpt: 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.

Full piece