Prosecuting the librarians
For those of you who hold libraries dear to your heart, please read and share what is happening to L.A.’s school librarians as they fight in court to prove they are teachers.
The post below is written by a school librarian who has spent the last two days in court fighting for her job.
“In the basement of the California Mart building in downtown Los Angeles, one can find a series of bright, cavernous rooms buzzing with the sound of the fluorescent panels that hang from a ceiling of exposed ducts and wiring. In the back of one of these rooms sits three long tables decorated with black table skirts along with perhaps a dozen rows of hard, plastic chairs. The room is exceptionally cold. Footsteps can be heard echoing each time someone makes his way to the restroom or to take a phone call. This is the setting for the Los Angeles Unified School District’s hearings for educators who have received a Reduction in Force notice. In other words, this is where teachers come to defend their qualifications in front of a judge in the hopes that someone in the legal system will understand what the students of this city really need. From what I’ve seen in the last two days, that just doesn’t seem likely…” full post here
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What an incredibly well written piece. Let us all remember the true ogre in the room is the chronic underfunding of our schools. Our librarians were rifed as well this year. While they are not faced with the insult of having to prove they are teachers, we still lose their services where they are most needed, in our libraries. One of the points I bring up over and over to our legislators during this week’s state of emergency is the loss of librarians. then I explain the vital role you play in teaching our students how to evaluate and manage the abundance of information created in the technology age. Nothing is more important. I told our school board our librarian is more important than I am (science teacher) Our librarian walks on water, she was our districts teacher of the year 3 years ago. her position was still cut. the cuts to education are obscene. We can not allow this to go on. Our union gives us a way to magnify our individual voices so we can be heard. Use it.
Be proud of the UTLA librarian who stood up to Senator Huff today in the hallway of the capitol. She was outstanding!
The thing about these changes (reforms) is that so many are taking place under the cover of darkness. If the public knew what was being done to these folks, there would be outrage. But other than a couple of teacher blogs, no one is covering this. By design?