School Library Staffing is on the Decline

In an earlier entry I discussed staffing and formulas used to decide just how much staffing a school library receives  The reality is that funding for school libraries is in heavy decline. Funding for libraries has been decreasing. Statistics and many different studies say this is a bad thing. A recent article by CBC News discussed a report by People for Education. The report discusses the decline of school libraries and the important role libraries play in student success.

The report by the group People for Education found 56 per cent of Ontario elementary schools in 2010 have at least one full- or part-time teacher-librarian, an accredited teacher who has library training. That's down from 80 per cent in the 1997/1998 school year, according to the report, which was released Monday morning.

Meanwhile, 66 per cent of secondary schools across the province have at least one teacher-librarian, down from 78 per cent in 2000/2001, when the group first started tracking data for high schools. CBC News

Libraries play an important role within the school. It offers a place for work to be completed, literacy to be encouraged and perhaps its most important role is as a support resource role for teachers. Quite often I meet with teachers to discuss teaching strategies and ideas for promoting literacy and content understanding, in their students.

Annie Kidder from People for Education also sites the importance of Libraries in helping to improve student achievement.

Teacher-librarians play an important role in helping children find information, evaluate and thinking critically about it and then applying it, said Annie Kidder, the executive director of the group in an interview.

"These kinds of skills that sort of help kids in what we are calling these days the knowledge economy are incredibly important," she said.   

When I first arrived at Lagerquist,  9 years ago, as a classroom teacher we had a full time Librarian who supported teachers through many different initiatives including the Forest of Reading and a research skills program. She was reduced to 80% the following year and then as years passed the job was again reduced to 50%. It was only this past year that the allocation was increased due to the arrival of grade 6 students at our school.

The state of our library is pretty good all things considered. We have new computer and work tables as well as well as Wi-Fi and a full computer lab available right in the library. We have a supportive principal who believes in the importance of a library and she has given me a lot of freedom to encourage use of the library. Students are free to visit during the day to complete work and to utilize technology. We are extremely short on books though. We're about 1000 titles short for a school our size but fundraising efforts are helping this. Visit our adopt a school site. I enjoy having the library open as much as possible in order to help students and teachers. I notice an excitement in the kids when we discuss books and kids are flocking to the technology we are offering students in the library.

There are many schools that can't say they have this much, I know that but this doesn't mean we can't keep building towards something even better. This is my goal to build up the library to make it the hub of the school.