East Aurora School District, New York - The adopted budget for the 2016-2017 school year includes a reduction of the Parkdale librarian position. This reduction was described in initial budget proposals as a reduction to "library support," which was deliberately deceptive.

In addition, they are planning to require the librarian to take on far more responsibility while losing the time and money to do it. This librarian, who will no longer be full time, will be required teach classes that are longer than the current year. In addition, due to enrollment, she will have more sections of students per cycle, for a total of 26 sections and a total increased instruction time of 2 hours and 10 minutes.  She will have more students, for more time, while having fewer hours. In addition to teaching students, the library media specialist is the only person in charge of ordering materials, processing and cataloging them. She also has to keep track of the circulation of these materials to students and maintain the organization of the library. This is in addition to the teaching duties and prepping and planning for teaching more students for longer periods of time.

Aside from this seeming quite illogical and showing a lack of respect for the position, it is also going to have a negative impact on the state of the library, which was heavily invested in when they expanded Parkdale. It's a beautiful library but it cannot be maintained without proper staffing.

Signing this petition is just the first step!

We need community members to attend the board meeting on Tuesday, May 17, 2016 (Budget Vote & Election) and have their voices heard. The board meetings take place in the Middle School Library at - 430 Main St, East Aurora, NY 14052 at  7 p.m.

School libraries staffed by full-time professional staff are incredibly important to academic life and study after study have proven that fact. Over the past 20 years, numerous studies have shown that elementary schools with at least one full-time certified teacher-librarian performed better on state tests. In a 2010 study conducted in Colorado, more children scored "proficient" or "advanced" in reading in schools with a full-time, credentialed librarian than those without. In an article published in 2015, the authors reviewed a multitude of studies that consistently show that students who have a full-time librarian in their schools perform better on their reading and writing scores than those who don’t have one.  One study, "Pennsylvania School Libraries Pay Off: Investments in Student Achievement and Academic Standards", revealed that students with full-time librarians in their schools are almost three times as likely to have “advanced” writing scores, compared to those students without full-time librarians.