Mesa schools plan to phase out librarians

There will be no more librarians in the Mesa public schools within three years, according to a new district plan to save money. Aides and other media specialists also will be eliminated under the model that will change the way the Mesa Unified School District operates its libraries.

Library employees say there is no way to maintain the services they currently provide and make the changes the administration has devised. But administrators say that's not true and that this change in staffing is long overdue.

"The services will not change at all," said Suzan DePrez, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. "We hope to develop more consistency among our schools in the skills students leave the resource center with. I think it will be a good system once in place."

The district has been informing employees of cuts to positions and programs over the past few weeks. Eliminating some school nurses and replacing them with full-time health assistants was part of an announcement that came last week.

Administrators say the district is facing a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall for the upcoming year and expects similar challenges over at least the next three years. The district is looking to cut about $20 million from the budget to start.

Librarians, and some aides at the high school level, will be replaced by one new position, a resource center specialist, a full-time, classified position. Also, the existing media center specialist and audio visual clerk position will be combined into one new position.

Additionally, based on the size of the school, the number of aides may be reduced at the elementary and junior high school level.

"We had a model for a long time that did not take into any consideration size," DePrez said.

While elementary schools, for example, had one librarian and one aide regardless of size, under the new plan, schools smaller than 600 students will no longer have an aide, and larger schools will have a part-time aide whose hours differ based on the size.

DePrez said while the first-year savings are still unknown, the savings after three years are anticipated to be more than $2 million.

Martha Kummer, a media center aide at Dobson High School, was told last week that her job has been eliminated. She and others are upset by the way information was given to them and say there's been a lot of confusion about what will happen next.

"The process is unfolding in a very disorganized way," she said.

For instance, a hotline was set up for employees who are part of the reduction in force to call for available jobs. However, only about a dozen jobs were listed on the hotline when Kummer called, and jobs that she knows exist at her school were not among those positions.

She also said the librarians were told that they will be phased out over three years, but haven't been told how many will go each year, leaving many employees in limbo as the end of the school year approaches.

DePrez said the district is waiting to see how many librarians will apply for open classroom positions. She said she thinks enough librarians will retire or apply for those positions to fulfill the one-third goal for this year.

Sara Hershauer was a librarian at Crismon Elementary School for many years before retiring about five years ago.

She said librarians, many of whom have master's degrees and are certified teachers, have far more responsibility than just checking out books.

When Hershauer was still with the district, she saw 1,200 students use the library each week. She said she managed a budget, organized book fairs, maintained the collection, taught students how to use reference technology and conduct research, coordinated story time and kept collections in line with what teachers were doing in the classroom.

She's heard details of the cuts through her former colleagues and said she was shocked at the news.

"I'm appalled, especially that our schools won't have a full-time librarian," she said. "They have such nice libraries and collections, and I can just see that deteriorating. It's a crime."