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Arizona Activists Take Media-Center Message to State Capitol

Some 20 teachers and librarians joined members of the Campaign to Save Arizona’s School Libraries March 9 in bringing a teach-in to legislators at the state capitol on the dearth of adequate media-center resources. “We’ve reached a critical level in every single district in the state,” explained Ann Dutton Ewbank, who chairs the Arizona Library Association’s Teacher-Librarian Division, telling how her 23,000-student school system, the Washington Elementary School District, has lost to budget cuts 10 of the 28 full-time teacher-librarian positions since 2000. As to the quality of school-library materials, Steve Chavez of Follett Library Corporation told lawmakers that rural districts tended to have nonfiction books that were published more than 50 years ago. “Countries don’t have those same boundaries anymore, don’t have those same leaders, don’t export the same goods,” he asserted.

“It’s shocking to see some of those libraries,” Rep. Phil Lopes (D-Tucson) said in the March 10 Phoenix Arizona Republic. Vowing to support a bill that would require a full-time teacher-librarian in every school, Lopes added that some centers “look like closets compared to real libraries.”

The deplorable condition of school-library collections isn’t limited to Arizona schools, and the subject has drawn media attention elsewhere recently:

  • The New York Times ran a lengthy article March 10 about the inability of students at the Edward Williams Elementary School in Mount Vernon, New York, to find books on prominent African-Americans for Black History Month reports—not even one on Rosa Parks. “It’s criminal what’s happened [to the collection],” remarked Ernest Gregg, who became principal last fall and has since hired a media specialist to spearhead a book-donation drive. “A library should inspire. A library should be seductive,” he added.
  • The March 4 San Bernardino County Sun publicized the plight of California’s long-suffering school libraries, which are reeling from the plummeting of the state’s book-buying subsidy from $28 per student in 2001 to $1.41 this fiscal year. To make matters worse, decision makers are considering removing monies earmarked for libraries from even those paltry funds. “We’re just not going to be able to buy the books we need to support the curriculum,” lamented Valerie Lichtman, librarian for the Rim of the World Unified School District, headquartered in Lake Arrowhead, California.

Posted March 12, 2004.

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