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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is a great question that I, as a school librarian, love to answer!

First of all, there is a research base to support the correlation between school libraries staffed by licensed librarians and improved student performance on assessments. Read more here: https://kappanonline.org/lance-kachel-school-librarians-matter-years-research/

Keep in mind that despite their presence in the press, book challenges are overall very rare. In my decades-long career I’ve not had a single parent concern raised. And “expensive to maintain” is not accurate: my current budget is about $6k, and if you divided that by the classrooms in my school, each teacher would get $250 each. That’s only enough to buy about a dozen hardcover books for each classroom annually. I buy from an approved vendor that is often able to provide a discount, and because they are processed for a library (the fancy covers), they are durable and my books serve the entire student population for many years.

Half of my job is serving students, but half of it is serving teachers. Not only do I annually research and purchase books to meet state standards, I also select many of the books teachers use for instruction. Teachers will ask me to gather what I have on X topic and then they base their instruction on what I give them. They have little time and often little familiarity with what is available and the rely on my suggestions.

My district deems my instruction more valuable than a foreign language (I am in ES). I assume that is because I am teaching both library and literacy skills. Students learn how to use a library independently so that in MS and HS they can do so for academic reasons. Kids need to learn how to identify good search terms and strategies and how to choose and navigate the many databases available to them. Classroom teachers often don’t know this stuff, so librarians are teaching them, too. They also learn research and literacy skills that supplement classroom learning. I know that with the amount of focus on testing and standards, my students seem to value the library as a place to celebrate the freedom to read whatever brings you joy, which promotes a valuable lifelong habit of reading.

As other posters have, I want to remind you that public libraries are not accessible to all. I work in a very high poverty school where some families are often unfamiliar with the advent of public libraries or their usefulness, and many of the adults are not literate in their home language. Many families have just one car used by the adult at work, so most errands are done by walking. My students have to cross a six-lane highway to get to our awesome public library and many are not permitted to do that until they are older. And don’t forget, a school library can be visited daily, and not at parents’ convenience on weekends or in the evenings.

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Thank you.[/quote]

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