Are you worth it?

I'm always looking for local grassroots efforts that work, since we all need models for how to influence people in power. I was starting to think "grassroots efforts" were just natural phenomena, and therefore impossible to model. But this week I've been reading the REIMA listserv like with the kind of interest I usually reserve for Megan Whalen Turner books, because the school librarians are on the move.

Since everyone's all Chicken Little about the economy, school administrators in a couple districts are considering laying off librarians. The only thing that stands between the administrators and their evil plan to deny children information literacy skills is a document from the 1960s called the Basic Education Plan, or BEP, which dictates staffing levels in libraries (among many other things).

Well, that and a legion of empowered and informed school librarians. Administrators may be asking for waivers, so they don't have to meet the BEP's requirements. But the librarians are prepared to prove that you can't cut library staff without reducing service levels. I wish I could sit in on their meeting next week, but I'll be at work, so I'll content myself with reading the e-mails and checking the wiki.

I also wish the people whose jobs are at risk here at PPL had as much data at their fingertips and the desire to pool it. When the director of the ALA Office For Diversity spoke at URI two years ago, she said, people are going to want to know why they have public libraries, but not public health care. We have to be prepared to prove our worth.

Want to help defend school library services? Write to these people:

Peter McWalters

Commissioner

Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

255 Westminster Street

Providence, RI 02903

Todd D. Flaherty

Deputy Commissioner
Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

255 Westminster Street

Providence, RI 02903

David V. Abbott

Deputy Commissioner

Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

255 Westminster Street

Providence, RI 02903

Board of Regents Members

Robert G. Flanders Jr., Esq., Chairman

Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education

c/o RI Department of Education
Attention: Sharon Osborne
255 Westminster Street, 5th floor
Providence, RI 02903

Patrick A. Guida, Esq., Vice-Chairman
Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education

c/o RI Department of Education
Attention: Sharon Osborne
255 Westminster Street, 5th floor
Providence, RI 02903