Teachers, students stand against librarian cuts at Jefferson, Kennedy highs

CEDAR RAPIDS - It was standing room only Monday evening at the Cedar Rapids school board meeting as teachers, librarians and students packed the room in protest of two high schools' plans to cut librarians.

Nearly a dozen people spoke out about the reductions at Jefferson and Kennedy high schools, part of a broader effort to cut the district's upcoming budget in response to less-than-hoped-for state support and sluggish enrollment.

'We're losing so many things,” said Jefferson High junior Mason Koelm, 17. 'It's scary as a student knowing how that's going to affect us.”

Koelm and other students have endured years of cuts, enough that Superintendent Brad Buck estimates the district has had to carve a combined $20 million from the budget over recent years.

The Jefferson and Kennedy librarian reductions fit into this year's districtwide cut of at least $2.3 million.

Administrators at each of the three comprehensive high schools were tasked with reducing their staffs by four full-time employees.

In addition to its librarian, Jefferson is reducing teaching positions in language arts and science, and partially reducing the band teacher position. Kennedy will reduce one math position, half of a music position and implement partial reductions in Spanish, Chinese and French.

Those reductions, district officials say, are the result of inadequate state funding. Falling enrollment has compounded the problem, with state dollars tied to the number of students in a district.

Since news of the cuts broke last week, advocates for school libraries have mobilized in support of the teacher-librarians - more than 1,250 people have signed an online petition posted by Every Library, a national non-profit organization, since Friday morning. Some Iowa educators drove to Cedar Rapids to speak against the cuts.

Val Ehlers, a shared teacher-librarian for the Gladbrook-Reinbeck and Grundy Center school districts, traveled nearly 80 miles. During public comments, she read a letter from the American Library Association and the American Association of School Librarians urging the board to block the cuts.

'I think that Cedar Rapids has a very strong library program that a lot of people look up to,” Ehlers said in an interview. 'I worry that if a large district like Cedar Rapids could make these cuts and not have a teacher-librarian represented in the high schools, then that might set a precedent to the state of Iowa.”

During the board meeting, it was clear that while no one was in favor of reducing the librarian positions, funding levels have put administrators in a difficult position.

'We've moved shells around so many different ways that we don't have much wiggle room,” board President John Laverty said in an interview. 'There are no good trade-offs.”

Kennedy High Principal Jason Kline said he has had to cut about 15 teaching positions in the past five years and couldn't 'continue to hack away at our classroom teachers.”

'I'm not the one who wants to cut positions,” he said. 'I want my school to be as staffed as possible. This is funding.”

Without their librarians, or 'media specialists” as they are called, libraries at Kennedy and Jefferson will be staffed by media secretaries. Those staff members will allow the libraries to stay open throughout the school day, Kline said, and duties typically handled by librarians - including ordering and cataloging materials - might be carried out by a committee of staff members, he said.

In identifying the positions to cut, Jefferson Principal Chuck McDonnell said in an email that reducing the librarian position allowed him to avoid larger class sizes.

'I can assure you we looked at all past cuts and considered many options before landing on these reductions,” he wrote. 'We feel this will have the least impact on learning.”

Many speakers agreed that the only viable solution would be a higher level of funding - which means either an increase in taxes or devoting a larger share of the budget to education instead of other needs.

'The choice to get rid of our librarians was not a choice made at Jefferson,” senior Emmy Lane Palmersheim, 17, said. 'It was a choice made in Des Moines.”