Answering The Call To Help School Libraries
Written by Lauren West and Jaximus Park
Across the nation, libraries have been under fire—but perhaps none more so than school libraries. Between book challenges and censorship laws, teacher librarians have had a lot to deal with – both in their schools and online.
However, California has its own unique challenges. As one of the most progressive and wealthy states, it would be easy to assume that we would lead the way in school libraries— but unfortunately, this is far from the case.
Out of fifty states, California remains in last place when it comes to the student-to-teacher librarian ratio of 1 to 7,182 in 2015. This means that in many districts and counties, students go underrepresented or simply unrepresented at all by a qualified teacher librarian—and in some cases, can mean they go without access to school libraries at all.
What is a Teacher Librarian?
Every state has its own qualifications for school librarians. In California, teacher librarians are specially trained thanks to obtaining a Master’s in Library and Information Science and a Teaching Credential to work with their schools to develop early literacy programs, and provide instruction in information and media literacy, including developing skills to evaluate sources to distinguish information from misinformation.
In model school libraries (in an ideal world), teacher librarians also work with library aides to better serve their K-12 community. Unfortunately, many California schools do not have fully-staffed or well-funded school libraries, leading to gaps across the state and inequity. Thankfully, there’s a proposed solution: AB 535: A Library Lead Agency.
What is a Library Lead?
A Library Lead Agency would involve placing an expert in school libraries within the system of support and accountability in the education budget process in the California legislature. Instituting a Statewide Library Lead would grant California a government representative to fight for equity in school libraries
A Library Lead Agency will be the first step towards building up California’s school library system and eliminating inequities in school library resources and staffing.
The first hearing for this bill is soon, on March 29th, 2023. The Education Committee, which is built up of seven California Assemblymembers/representatives will meet to see first if there has been enough interest in pursuing this bill further.
Every social media post, email, letter, and phone call counts as a tally in support of this and backs the future of school libraries.
If it passes this round, there will be an even greater chance of it passing into law.
What Can I Do?
If you live in California, the most important thing you can do is contact your representatives, especially if they are within the current Education Committee. We have worked together with the California School Library Association to create some scripts and materials you can use to contact them and get the word out further.
In fact, it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3:
- Find your representative.
- Compare against the representatives listed on the Education Committee.
- Use one of our email scripts to contact any/all representatives on the list, especially if you’re their constituent (in which case, let them know!). Even if you’re not, contact them anyway.
We have done the work to help create letter and social media templates for you, so all you need to do is tailor the letter to how you see fit, put in their email/username, sign, and hit send. It’s that simple: add your name to the vote for school libraries.
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