Six TUSD schools to get librarians; 71 don't

The Tucson Unified School District Governing Board approved more than $350,000 to fund six library media specialist positions beginning in the fall at six school sites after a push by board member Sadie Shaw to hire librarians at every district school.

Certified librarians, also known as library media specialists, are licensed educators who teach students, collaborate with classroom teachers and support curriculum development. Library assistants, by contrast, are support staff who manage day-to-day library operations and logistics.

The addition comes as the district continues to face a significant shortage of staff. TUSD currently employs 11 certified librarians across its 88 schools, while most campuses without a librarian rely on library assistants.

District policy states that school library programs should be offered to all students from pre-K through 12 and include the services of a professional, certified teacher-librarian as part of the district's annual staffing plan.

"There are 73 elementary, middle and K‑8 schools in this district with school libraries, and only one of them has a certified librarian," Rose Bratton, a library associate and cataloger for the Education Materials Center, said during the call to the audience at Tuesday night's board meeting. "This pilot program will bring that up to seven, which is a modest start, but a start I’m really excited for nonetheless."

Governing board tension

The vote exposed a sharp disagreement among governing board members over whether the district should move beyond the six positions and fund librarians at every eligible campus.

When the item came up nearly three hours into the meeting, Shaw argued the district should make a substantially larger investment. Shaw moved to approve 76 total librarian positions, but the proposal failed in a 4-1 vote.

"I don't know how we can accept the data that we've seen in this presentation that certified librarians are linked to higher achievement, greater use of our libraries, and a stronger school culture, and only move to approve six positions in our district when we know there is such great need across TUSD," Shaw said.

Shaw pointed to last year's successful budget override campaign, which supporters said would strengthen student services across the district.

"The majority of Tucsonans voted to approve the override, and I certainly was under the impression that we were going to fight and get librarians, PE teachers, and robust art education across Tucson Unified," she said, referring to the governing board's support letter for the budget override election from last year. "Six additional librarians is not going to cut it, especially with so much need in our district to get our reading scores up."

But district officials said the override funds had already been committed to other priorities.

Ricky Hernández, TUSD's chief financial officer, said during the meeting that override revenue had been allocated to areas, including teacher and administrator raises, more school social workers and instructional supplies. Some remaining funds, he said, were being used to support the six librarian positions.

Board member Dr. Ravi Shah pressed Shaw on how the district would pay for a districtwide expansion.

When Shah asked how Shaw thought the governing board should fund all 76 positions, Shaw responded, "What is it, $4.7 million? It's not a huge number. We cover subscriptions and curriculum every year that far exceeds this amount of money."

Shaw suggested cutting subscriptions she viewed as less valuable to students, drawing a challenge from Shah.

"What subscription should we cut to fund this?" Shah asked. "You've been on this governing board for five and a half years. You have a single thing we have to cut right now to fund $4 million of librarians."

Speaking to the Star on Wednesday morning, Hernández said that although the governing board's statement supporting the override referenced librarians, the district itself never promised the measure would fund additional librarian positions.

"(The override) will provide critical funding to maintain and expand career and technical education, fine arts, librarians, physical education, student mental health services, and preschool," the governing board wrote in its support statement in the voter pamphlet last election cycle.

However, TUSD's official list of planned override expenditures did not specifically include funding for additional librarians.

Moving forward

For the six schools selected for the pilot program, the positions are expected to be in place when students return this fall.

The district plans to give the board an annual report on the impact of these six new positions next Spring.

Karin Bernal, a certified librarian, cautioned against judging the program too quickly, saying meaningful results may take several years.

"I think it's going to take a couple years to see those reading scores really improve," she told the Star Wednesday morning. She said other areas of impact, like student engagement, aren't something that could be measured by a test.

She also said she hopes the district will involve current librarians as it hires and trains the new employees.

"It'd be great if somehow there was some kind of program where they could shadow somebody," Bernal said. "We'd love it if they're hiring people just to have them give them that opportunity to go into some of the current libraries and spend a day or whatever, just seeing how things are run, ask questions ... get them trained."