School Librarians are often the First Casualties of School Budget Cuts!
The NCBLA urges you to contact your local school board and school department, your state legislators and education department, and your representatives to the United State Congress to ask for level funding for school and public libraries, and to keep state certified librarians employed in school and public libraries!
In times of economic crisis school and local libraries are needed more than ever and are usually the first casualties of local, state, and federal budget cuts.
The following is from a recent article in the New York Times:
"Ms. Rosalia, 54, is part of a growing cadre of 21st-century multimedia specialists who help guide students through the digital ocean of information that confronts them on a daily basis. These new librarians believe that literacy includes, but also exceeds, books.
“The days of just reshelving a book are over,” said Ms. Rosalia, who came to P.S. 225 nearly six years ago after graduating at the top of her class at the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. “Now it is the information age, and that technology has brought out a whole new generation of practices.”
Some of these new librarians teach children how to develop PowerPoint presentations or create online videos. Others get students to use social networking sites to debate topics from history or comment on classmates’ creative writing. Yet as school librarians increasingly teach students crucial skills needed not only in school, but also on the job and in daily life, they are often the first casualties of school budget crunches"To read more in the New York Times, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/books/16libr.html?em
To read more about how you can become a literacy-library advocate, go to:
http://www.thencbla.org/BPOSpages/becomeactivist.html
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/wo/woissues/washfunding/fedfund/stimulusfund.cfm
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/wo/gettinginvolved/fllan/fllan.cfm
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