View: School librarians serve the whole child

Students don't just come to the school library, they flock there. They spend lunch and recess reading, helping other students, working on projects and feeling safe and joyous in a place that nurtures their imaginations and feeds their curiosity. They look for new books and reread favorites. They check out Chromebooks and write stories. They thrive.

While New Yorkers wait for the state budget's passage and any news about restoration of funds from the "gap elimination adjustment," the Bedford Central School District’s Board of Education is trying to craft a budget plan. Staring at an almost $9 million budget gap and finding it impossible to provide even a bare bones education within the tax cap, the administration has proposed that the school board vote to ask the community to support a tax cap override.

Even with this scenario, Bedford’s budget, as it stands (it is a work-in-progress), calls for cutting elementary librarians.

Why are school librarians at risk? What is more foundational to education than a library with a certified librarian? Harold Howe, former U.S. commissioner of education, said, “What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education.”

Elementary school librarians are essential to a whole education but they are not mandated, and therein lies the rub.

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A 2015 study done by Michael Radlick and Joette Stefl-Mabry concluded that New York's state-certified school librarians have a direct impact on student achievement by helping to raise literacy and math scores.  School librarians can strengthen their entire schools in numerous ways — by using library resources to support school-wide curriculum, providing instruction in research skills, and offering technology training to colleagues. Librarians influence and implement many of the school-wide goals and initiatives that ensure that all students are college and career ready, across grade levels as well as disciplines.

School librarians teach students how to locate appropriate information and how to use information and technology responsibly; they develop students’ digital literacy skills; they design inquiry-based assignments that complement curriculum; and they guide teachers and students in accessing and recognizing reliable information in all formats.

Elementary school librarians serve each student as an individual from the time that student enters school as a pre-reader to the time the student graduates, ready and prepared for middle school. School librarians ensure students have access to a collection that reflects a diverse population and includes books by diverse authors featuring stories about diverse cultures. School librarians build bridges to the community by partnering with other community organizations.

We cannot imagine what the school experience for students will look like without librarians. Visiting a school library for a minimal amount of time under the guidance of a school librarian may now be scheduled only every other week. If there's a snow day or an assembly or a scheduled test, library visits could drop to once a month.

It may be that test-prep will fill the time children now use to grow and explore. That is simply not acceptable.

We as a society must cherish and defend our school libraries. School libraries are the Petri-dish for democracy, the first place children experience the freedom to learn what they choose, to pursue their own passions, and to think critically. Libraries and the librarians who are certified to provide these essential educational services for our children are non-negotiable for the education of the whole child.

Let’s work to ensure that our state supports our schools so that our schools can include school librarians.

The writer is school librarian at Mount Kisco Elementary School in Bedford and president of the New York Library Association's Section of School Librarians.