[CALIBK12] Library Advocacy next steps

[Heidi Snively]

Thanks for putting it out there, Megan, from someone born the year BEFORE Disneyland opened...(attractive website you have there, by the way).  
 
If no funding is found for next year, then I am the last library specialist standing to serve our five elementary schools.  Log on to our library website (below) to see what that will mean to the more than 2,700 K-5 students....er..um..the nuts and bolts we're still trying to figure out...hopefully my colleagues will be restored.
 
It must be strongly noted that our hardworking school board has looked under every rock for money to stave off reductions.  The all have schoolage children!  When there physically just is not any money for programs not mandated-- and mandated services that we must provide with less-than-adequate money-- they have little recourse but to make these hard decisions.  
 
It's not the local school districts at fault, but the sad bottom-of-the-barrel state funding that has been allowed to serve the children of California.
 
Heidi Snively
Library Media Specialist
Grand View Elementary School
Manhattan Beach Unified School District
310-546-8022 x5404
hsnively at manhattan.k12.ca.us
www.grandviewlibrary.info <http://www.grandviewlibrary.info/>  
 
WISHING YOU A SEUSS-TASTIC
READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY - MARCH 2, 2009
http://www.nea.org/grants/13003.htm
 
 

________________________________

From: calibk12-bounces at lists.sjsu.edu on behalf of Megan Fuller
Sent: Sun 3/1/2009 11:51 AM
To: library
Subject: [CALIBK12] Library Advocacy next steps



Hi all,
 
I've been reading, with interest, all the library advocacy emails.  I know that in the PVUSD we have had parents write letters, had students speaking in support at board meetings, we have spent time promoting the library program to the board members.  We have sent "School Libraries Work", and Doug's report, and other library studies on to the Board and the Superintendent.  Hopefully on March 5th these efforts will be rewarded and library programs will not be cut further.  I am pretty disillusioned at this point, and having spent three years on the CSEA negotiations committee, I don't really have faith in my union's ability to save jobs or keep volunteers out of a library, should worse come to worse.
 
It seems to me that it's time for the California School Library Association to step up and take a legal stand.  I, as an individual, do not have the resources to sue the district on ed code violations.  I truly believe that if school libraries are to survive and grow in California, ed code needs to have some teeth. I don't know enough about CSLA's finances to know if a suit is possible, but I believe there are enough California districts in voilation of ed code that CSLA could have its pick.  Does CSLA have a legal fund?  Has any thought been given to this type of action? Would the threat of action be enough to give districts across California pause before they cut library positions and programs?
 

Megan Fuller 
Aptos Junior High 
http://www.aptosjr.pvusd.net/library/ 

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. 
-- Wernher von Braun 



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