Almost two months ago, students at the Templeton Elementary School in Bloomington, Indiana, performed a play that they and their parents had written, The Case of the Missing Librarian, as an expression of the loss they felt over their beloved librarian, Laura Hall, being reassigned to a classroom at the end of the school year. At the time, I railed about "tone-deaf decisionmakers" around the country who time and again ignore research proving the pivotal role of fully staffed school libraries in molding youngsters with critical thinking skills.
Lo and behold, education officials in the greater Bloomington school district had a glorious change of heart June 2: Hall will return to the Templeton school library in the fall and 14 pink-slipped colleagues will do likewise in their respective schools. "We are indeed back, at least for one more year!" Hall exulted to American Libraries. Also reprieved are the 11 classroom teachers who would have been bumped out of their jobs by school librarians with seniority. "Restoration of positions has been what we've been about since the beginning," union representative Sandy Steele said in the June 2 Bloomington Herald Times.
Needless to say, something had to give for these school libraries to remain whole—and something crucial certainly did. The school board and the teachers union, which had been in negotiation for some time, agreed to do away with board-funded stipends for any extracurricular activity for FY2010–11; they also approved zeroing out teacher salary hikes for the just-ending and next academic years to teachers with more than 15 years' tenure and capping compensation increases for less-experienced educators at 2%. The sacrifices are estimated to save the Monroe County Community Schools Corporation just over $1 million.
However bittersweet, this reversal of misfortune will add another virtual pinpoint to a new hopeful Google map launched May 31 to document districts that "Stand Up for School Librarians." Who'd like to do the honors?