Tight Budget Forces Closing
of Massachusetts School Library
Budget cuts have forced the closing of the Cranesville School library in Dalton, Massachusetts, following the elimination of 17 paraprofessional positions in the district this academic year, including the manager of the elementary school’s library, the Berkshire Eagle reported September 12.
All three of the Central Berkshire Regional School District’s library paraprofessionals were cut, but the other two schools that lost library staff still have full-time librarians.
Principal Bruce R. Collina said he closed the library because it could not operate without someone to oversee the cataloging of books and to coordinate volunteers. However, he said, the idea of no library is “an absurdity. The library is the heart of an elementary school building. . . . How can you encourage children to read if you don’t have a library?”
Almost all 50 people who attended a September 7 Parent Teacher Organization meeting expressed concern over the library’s closing, and Cranesville parents plan to make a presentation pushing for the reopening of the library at the school committee’s next meeting September 23.
Posted September 20, 1999.
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