Pink Slips – and Rumors – Fly in L.A.

Bernier told American Libraries that provisional pink slips were issued to some 44 LAUSD school librarians, a number that constitutes almost one-third of the district’s roughly 150 credentialed librarians. Although that prospect is dire enough, it is certainly not as draconian as reassigning the entire cadre of professionals, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Daily News, and School Library Journal. Still, an observation made yesterday by Jim Rettig, immediate past president of the American Library Association to ALA governing Council discussion list remains true: “What the decision makers fail to realize is that the long-range harm is done not just to students, who no longer have the services of their librarians, but to the society those students will eventually be responsible for.”

Undoubtedly, the reportage got kicked into high gear by a rumor mill on adrenaline. Among the unconfirmed scenarios is that laid-off support staff from the school district’s central office with more seniority than a teacher-librarian could “bump” the credentialed professional into a classroom, leaving an untrained worker in charge of the library. What makes such a nonsensical prospect possible is that LAUSD considers teacher-librarians to be part of its interchangeable pool of paraprofessionals.

Further muddying the waters is the gradual rollout of a “Per Pupil Funding” initiative that gave 12 local school councils the power to determine how to allocate their budgets for FY2010. Two chose not to retain their teacher-librarians; an additional 12 school councils have been added to the program for FY2011.

Add to that the uncertainty that library aides must be feeling more than halfway through the school year in which many of them were reassigned across town for undetermined reasons, and another rumor that officials are weighing whether to replace aides altogether with volunteers, and voila: The perfect recipe for fermenting fear.

Needless to say, teacher-librarians in Los Angeles and elsewhere in crisis-stricken California aren’t taking reduction-in-force concerns lying down. Among their grassroots efforts was the development of an advocacy button featuring fiction hero Hugo Cabret leading the charge with a “Save California School Libraries!” banner. Caldecott-winning artist Brian Selznick donated the image; several other artists created additional advocacy designs.

At the national level, American Library Association President Camila Alire and American Association of School Librarians President Cassandra Barnett issued a letter today to LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines making the case for strong school libraries staffed by credentialed professionals. “For many students, school libraries are the only source of free access to computers and the Internet, but without the expertise and guidance of a certified school librarian, students will be left to fend for themselves and struggle to avoid the misinformation pitfalls of the Internet,” they wrote.