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"ABC – support your library."
This mantra was chanted by several people at a rally before the Mesa Public Schools Governing Board’s April 22 meeting at the MPS Curriculum Services Center to protest the district’s proposed elimination of the library media specialist position to address its budget shortfall.
"Over the next three years, the district is changing the media center model so that it will be overseen by a paraprofessional and our media specialists would be phased out at the end of that three-year period," said MPS Spokesperson Kathy Bareiss.
She said no employees will lose their job.
"All of the media specialists are certified teachers and will go back to the classroom," she explained.
Scott Ritter, a teacher-librarian at Zaharis Elementary School, 9410 E. McKellips Road, began sending e-mails April 17 encouraging his personal contacts to send messages to the Governing Board, attend the April 22 meeting, organize awareness campaigns at their schools, read research supporting teacher-librarian staffing at school libraries, read an article written by American Libraries Online supporting Mesa school librarians and forward the e-mail to other possible supporters.
"A lot of people, on that short of notice, couldn’t make it tonight but they did say that they were going to e-mail the governing board, and I appreciate that kind of support," he said at the rally.
In the e-mail, he said Zaharis considered asking parents to pass out flyers to other parents at morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up urging them to contact board members or attend the April 22 meeting, but that did not happen.
"As a district employee, I wouldn’t want to use district supplies or funds or time where I’m on the clock to be doing that," Mr. Ritter explained.
Mr. Ritter recognizes MPS’ unprecedented budget crisis, but hopes the district would place high priority on daily teacher-student contact.
"I’m hoping that they will reconsider and maybe they can find some other ways to save that money," he said.
In addition to his media center duties, Mr. Ritter is the leads sponsor for the Zaharis morning broadcast channel and helps coordinate the school’s fifth-grade science camp and sixth-grade field trip to Sea World.
"I don’t know who’s going to be able to pick that up from our district or from our school," he said.
He is also a soccer coach at Las Sendas Elementary School, 3120 N. Red Mountain.
"I know that when I e-mailed ... my soccer players that one of the moms on that team responded that she was going to be here tonight with some parents," he explained.
Ann Ewbank – an Arizona State University librarian and coordinator and spokesperson for Fund Our Future Arizona, a coalition for school libraries and information technology – was disappointed by the district’s proposal of phasing out every school librarian position over the next three years.
"Mesa is the largest school district in Arizona and they have had a really amazing track record of staffing and fully funding their school libraries," she said.
Ms. Ewbank said though teacher librarians are certified teachers with extra library media training, their positions are excluded from classroom dollars.
"The issue is that teacher librarians are not counted for as in the classroom, even though the library is really the largest classroom in the school with the biggest amount of resources, and it’s a shared classroom where teachers teach and students learn," she said.
Ms. Bareiss said the entire budget process has been extremely difficult for the district’s superintendency and board.
"Mesa Public Schools has built up such quality services over the years, and we are all very sad that we have to give some of them up, yet we are at a point where we are forced to live within our budget and do those things," she said.
