As the Bellevue School District has pointed out on page 3 of the “Frequently Asked Questions About District Budget Reductions” document posted on their website, “One secondary school chose more than 10 years ago to eliminate the librarian....” As a result, we have examples of how the lack of a teacher-librarian adversely affects students. Chinook Middle School has a room with materials, but it is only staffed by a full-time library assistant. The library assistant does a wonderful job of making the facility open to students, but this person is not a certificated teacher-librarian and therefore cannot teach the skills students need to have in order to conduct research, access information and find good books to read. As a result, students have gone back to their elementary school librarians for help: I cannot count the number of times over the last ten years that I have had students call, email or come to see me in distress over assignments, lack of resources, and no one there in the library who could recommend great books to read. Also, I have worked with many former...students on their research projects, finding appropriate resources and guiding them through the process of completing their projects. I have also checked out many [of my elementary school library] books to aid them. and: I am writing this both as a District Librarian AND as a former Bellevue District parent. My two children attended Chinook Middle School - and received a wonderful education there, and continued on to Bellevue High School. While attending Chinook, there was no certificated, professional Librarian there. I wrote letters every year to the principal expressing my concerns re. this library situation. My vivid memories of this time included attending school events/sports activities for my children in which parents I knew would ask ME book recommendations for their own children to read for various genre book studies. I always made to sure give good, decent books as part of birthday gifts my children gave to their middle school friends. I even compiled a bibliography of historical fiction titles for one of my daughter's social studies teachers at Chinook, as there was no librarian to do this. Furthermore: If you're wondering what difference it makes to have or not have library staff, visit the library at a school in the district without staff. There are books left. However, there is no record keeping at this point of whether books are checked out and to whom. Many of them have been moved into classrooms of teachers who expect to use them. The remaining books are no longer kept in any particular order, nor are they consistently shelved standing up. No new materials are being acquired. The information literacy functions that a library should perform are gone. Students' opportunities to locate print resources, to build bibliographies and to understand the research process is virtually nonexistent. Parents of college-bound students and all people who care about kids' intellectual growth realize that cutting library staff is cutting an intellectual life line for the future of our community. The #1 job of the school district is to develop the minds of the future. The library is the heart of the intellectual life of a school.
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