Observers were delighted, fearing that the board would cut an anticipated 70 education assistant positions that had been saved last year by an emergency grant. Instead, they retained those jobs at a cost of $2.5 million.
“That Toronto’s going out on a limb and saying we’re going to fund libraries is really a significant move,” said Annie Kidder, spokesperson for People for Education, members of which served on the review committee of a scathing 2003 report on the state of school libraries in Canada. “We are sending a strong signal we have to invest in libraries,” trustee Bruce Davis agreed in the February 24 Toronto Star. “This is key to our efforts on literacy.”
Ontario’s school-funding formula allocates one librarian for every 769 students, the Star reported. Since 1997, the number of Ontario schoolteachers who double as librarians has fallen 30%, and the number of full-time librarians dropped 60%. Meanwhile, funding for quality media centers in the U.S. remains a mixed bag, with voters approving most school-library referenda in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, and New Mexico last November, even as states such as Oregon continue to document the gap between education standards and media-center realities.
Posted February 25, 2005.