Librarians needed
Some HISD principals see these essential workers as expendable. That shouldn’t be.
It’s a good problem to have: discovering that all the popular “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” books are checked out of the school library. And luckily for the kids, librarian Mary Chance is good at solutions.
She taps some of the more affluent parents at Hogg Middle School to see if they can supply more copies. She’s always thinking of new ways to get her students to love reading, whether it’s brainstorming new ideas for library programming or studying the display strategies of the Amazon Books store at Baybrook Mall to figure out how the corporate behemoth lures the kids in.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, when schools were shut down, Chance made sure her students had an abundance of reading material at home. She hopped on her bicycle and pedaled to different parks in Houston to meet students and give them books.
Chance is a library science evangelist. Her outside-the-box approach is not just a testament to her work ethic — though her job performance earned her an HISD Librarian of the Year award in 2019 — but also to a fundamental understanding of the structural and financial challenges to getting students to open a book in the first place.
“At the end of the day, I want the books to be read, I need that process to start and I need to hook them so that they'll come back,” Chance told the editorial board. “Then their reading, and their learning, and their education becomes self-actualized.”
Yet librarians such as Chance are increasingly scarce in Houston ISD, Texas’ largest public school district. The Chronicle’s Alejandro Serrano reported recently that the district’s 276 campuses have only 58 certified librarians, a 77 percent decrease from 25 years ago. Of the district’s 257 libraries, 79 have staff vacancies, 51 are staffed by clerks and 68 by teachers.
Most of the unstaffed libraries are at schools where at least 90 percent of the student body is considered economically disadvantaged. In other words, the campuses that can least afford to lose a library. The Chronicle reported in 2019 that in at least seven HISD schools which serve predominantly low-income students, a majority of children did not check out a single book during the 2018-19 school year.
The lack of investment in Houston school libraries is partly due to the school district’s decentralized system, which gives individual principals broad discretion over programming and staffing decisions at each campus. Certified librarians are paid the same as a regular schoolteacher. While most Texas school districts consider librarians essential, on par with a nurse or guidance counselor, in Houston laying off a librarian is seen as an easy way to save $50,000 or to redistribute those funds elsewhere, perhaps toward the hiring of an instructional specialist who can focus on preparing students for standardized tests.
That’s a shame, and counter-intuitive. A 2015 Washington state study found that the presence of a certified school librarian was a predictor of higher elementary and middle school math scores. That same study found that a quality library program is what distinguishes high-performing, high-poverty schools from low-performing, high-poverty schools.
Another reason to lament the loss of librarians has as much to do with educating grown-ups as kids. With Gov. Greg Abbott and other Texas politicians taking aim at school library shelves across the state — removing or even banning books that address race or sexuality — certified school librarians are needed more than ever, both to speak up for the books and also for the careful process — hopefully, led by a librarian — that led to the books being selected. And if that careful process didn’t exist — maybe it’s because a librarian wasn’t there to lead it.
Exposure to a rich variety of literature written from different places and perspectives is essential in helping children develop everything from imagination to empathy. Librarians know this. There are few educators more qualified to teach children to think critically and develop information literacy, an understanding of what separates fact from fiction. State legislators concerned about students being exposed or forced to read books that make them uncomfortable completely overlook the fact that school librarians are paid to solve that problem by suggesting books for students that balance their own curiosity with age-appropriate material.
What if, instead of obsessing over book lists, the state redirected that energy toward bringing every school library up to state standards — with sufficient staff and books, updated collections and budgets for technology enhancements? That’s what new Superintendent Millard House II has pledged to do in Houston. House included an effort to bring all of the district’s libraries to state standards in his plans for federal COVID-19 relief funds and plans to address the district’s librarian shortage in his strategic plan.
Even if House committed to staffing every school library, though, he’d need to provide those librarians some assurances that those positions would last. Why work in Houston, where a principal can put your job on the chopping block at a whim, when you can work in a neighboring school district that can provide far more job security?
Before former HISD Superintendent Richard Carranza left for New York City, he proposed a change in staffing methods to ensure all campuses employed a full-time, certified librarian. It’s a worthwhile proposal to revive. Until Houston starts treating librarians as essential employees, our city’s school children will be unprepared for an increasingly competitive learning environment.
They have 99 other challenges. A missing librarian needn’t be one.
All students, especially those bound for college, need to learn early how to become effective readers. They need access to library databases where they can learn research methodology and how to cull sources. Students, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, also need a gateway to their imagination. Books cultivate the idea that the world is much larger than the neighborhoods students go home to every day. That’s a precious resource worth fighting for. And we should.