Libraries are a fundamental part of every school building, elementary and secondary, and even into college for those who go. Students should have access to their school library at least a few times a week. However, if the school board’s preliminary budget cut is enforced, there will be only one librarian for all six buildings in the PENNCREST school district. This means each school will have a librarian for a sixth of the school year, which means school librarians will have a sixth of the impact in the district.
As of this year, our district has three certified librarians, Susan Hanley from Cambridge Springs, Michael Brenneman from Saegertown, and Jeanne Rose from Maplewood. These three librarians have strong feelings about this preliminary budget cut, especially Mr. Brenneman and Mrs. Hanley.
Brenneman explains that he feels “the proposed librarian cuts are misguided.” While he understands that the district’s budget is tight and has an appropriation for the board’s great effort to keep class sizes manageable, he still argues, “The library is one of the places where students build a love of reading. It is the one place where they are completely free to choose reading materials that interest them without restraints about reading levels or curriculum requirements.” This comment stresses how the library is a primary source of academic growth and goes hand in hand with other areas of study, especially in elementary school, the most developmental part of school.
As opposed to this proposed budget cut as he is, Brenneman still trusts the administration and school board, adding, “Our administration and school board have proven resourceful enough in the past to maintain library services, and I feel that they could come up with a way to do so in the future.”
Speaking of the future, if this is passed, Brenneman will be leaving Saegertown and returning to Cambridge Springs High School as an English teacher. In doing this, he’ll be forced to abandon “some of the most rewarding teaching of [his] career,” where he has “especially enjoyed learning to work with the elementary students and seeing students at the high school through a different role.”
If we stand here and do nothing about this proposal, we’ll not only break the heart and hard work of Mr. Brenneman’s seven years at Saegertown, but we’ll also be breaking the heart of every elementary student at Saegertown that looks forward to seeing Mr. Brenneman’s weekly lessons, where he teaches and reinforces reading skills, story elements, and library usage in a more free environment than a classroom.
If you’re not swayed by the emotional impact of this change, I’ll show you the logistical side and tell me I’m wrong.
It’s pretty simple: libraries run better with librarians in them, just like classrooms do with teachers. Could you imagine sending your kids to school where the classrooms only have teachers for a sixth of the school year? If you support cutting all but one librarian for the district, you’re doing the same thing. It’s proven that “students who attend schools with a full-time certified librarian score significantly higher on math and reading tests than do matched students who attend schools without a full-time school librarian.” So wouldn’t you want your kids to perform as best they could in school? On top of this, in many cases librarians provide a comfort for students that can be different and more individualized than the environment of a classroom. If they lose librarians that they’ve grown up with, they’ll not only lose a place of unique comfort, but they’ll also be losing a friend.
The impacts of losing a friend, especially in elementary school, are intensely severe. This grief is often translated into “physical symptoms, school avoidance, or social withdrawal,” as talked about on mhanational.org. This is because younger children aren’t usually equipped with the vocabulary they need to process and vocalize their feelings of losing a friend. This lack of process can be helped in the library, on a weekly basis in most cases. Besides intense and unspoken grief, tendencies of self-blame and loss of security are both common symptoms of a lost friendship. Outside of the mental effects, children often experience behavioral, academic, and social problems. In many cases, children will act out, or even experience developmental regression, when they go back to old habits. On top of all of this, many children who have gone through a loss of a friend experience many challenges academically, including distractedness, forgetfulness, and a drop in academic engagement. With this, social withdrawal usually follows; do you really want your child to go through all that because of a budget cut? Especially when there are other means to save the same money?
Randy Styborski, the school board president, stressed the importance of the board receiving new information before reaching their final decision on the librarians. He expressed it especially in areas such as weighing alternatives and financial gain vs. student impact, along with the overall effect it would have on the district. The initial reason for their inclusion in the proposal for the budget cut was because “librarian positions were considered largely due to anticipated retirements and other movements within those roles,” as explained by Jason Digiacomo. Mr. Styborski makes a point of saying that the inclusion as an option “does not diminish the value of the work our librarians do for students and staff every day.”
Acting as a follow-up, the superintendent, Shawn Ford, explained, “As we reviewed possible budget reductions, we tried to focus on areas that would have the least impact on students’ daily classroom experience while protecting classroom teachers, programs, and opportunities.” Mr. Ford makes clear that he understands “why students and staff care deeply about our librarians,” as he continues to acknowledge that “They play an important role in our schools and have helped many students develop a love of reading and learning.” This is supported by Mr. Brenneman’s comment, “I have students every year who discover what they love to read through the library.”
In a more societal sense, Brenneman continues, “As a society, we are losing opportunities to develop the critical reading skills that students need to be successful in life. Our elementary teachers are skilled professionals who do amazing work with our students, but some students need the broader choices and freedom of a good library to discover the books that hook their passion. We are short-changing PENNCREST students when we provide only token library services.”
What seems off is that Mr. Ford claims he understands how important the librarians are to many students across the district, and I’m not doubting that he understands; I just don’t think he sees the whole picture. This is in part due to a prior comment of his, in which he stresses, “I also want to emphasize that the librarians affected by this proposal are expected to remain employed by the district in other positions.” This alone shows that Ford lacks the full scope of school librarians. This fight didn’t start out of a fear of losing their job; it came from the fear of losing their position. And it may make a difference if the librarians affected by this proposal stayed in the same school to still be able to impact and connect with the same students, but as previously mentioned, Mr. Brenneman would be returning to Cambridge Springs with the passing of this proposal. Alternatives to this change were thought of and talked about amongst the members of the board, including “three budget options… two include not backfilling the same positions—one with no tax increase and one with a tax increase that would reduce the deficit but not completely. A third option includes additional staff reductions and cuts to athletic programs.”
At the heart of this battle is the unique impact and nature a student only feels in a library with the librarian that they’ve grown up knowing. If this proposal is passed, almost every PENNCREST student will go through the abrupt loss of a full-time, familiar librarian. Is one of the alternatives a better way to go about the needed budget deficit? Many would argue not; however, I’m not one of them. By utilizing one of these other methods, we could keep the librarians in schools year-round and potentially only “sacrifice” the traditional aging out that teachers would do no matter what.
The board strives to weigh academic preservation with the budget in making this decision, but even in a school, there is something more important than the preservation of quality education, and that’s students’ mental health and well-being. If the board truly cared about the students across the district, they would find a different way to save money, especially since “these savings would not significantly reduce the overall budget,” as was made known by Mr. Digiacomo, a member of the board.
