The Inquisition Begins Again 2012

Last time I wrote it was June 2011 after the inquisition of my Teacher Librarian colleagues by the LAUSD lawyers.  Starting this Monday, April 23, my friend will once again be interrogated by the lawyers in a hearing to defend their right to keep their jobs, or any job for that matter.  The district has decide not to fund:  any Libraries, any Adult Education, any Pre-K programs, and much much more. 11,000 teachers apparently received the notorious "pink-slip".

The scary part this time is that our new Superintendent John Deasy is such a bully that no one has planned any actions, no one is sending letters, no one is speaking out except for a few isolated demonstrations on behalf of Adult Educ. or Pre-K.  This is not a way to win.  But Deasy et al have threatened to use any action or writing or speaking out against an employee.  He has already proven what a bully he is when he entered the classroom of a substitute teacher and didn't like what she was doing and said so. She politely asked him to leave.  He fired her immediately.  Substitutes have little protection.  Outrageously Deasy had the nerve to show up at the free screening of the movie "Bully" shown to 6000 LAUSD students.  I guess being top bully he should have had a lot to say.  He constantly lies and changes direction to suit his needs. After all, he purchased his PhD.  What does that say about him or about Monica Garcia who chose him along with her Gates/Eli Broad lackey friends.  Recall Monica Garcia is in full swing right now.  We need to elect at least one more decent educator to help Bennett Kayser and Marguerite LaMotte defeat the forces of privatization.

Disgraceful Interrogation of LA School Librarians

I returned from Costa Rica at 2:00 a.m. May 1st in time to help garner support for Los Angeles school libraries at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC. We collected wonderful comments from supporters on postcards. Only one person I asked started ragging on me about taxes. I'm so sick of that. And now my friends -- 80 or so Teacher Librarians -- are being interrogated by LAUSD lawyers about their ability to teach because of a recent motion that we need to have "recency" in the small classroom in our original credentials. Thanks to one TL, Michael Bernard, Hector Tobar of the LA Times came twice to see what was going on and wrote an eloquent piece in May 13th's LA Times. My husband wrote an eloquent letter to the Times but I doubt it will be printed so I'll share it here or try to-- for some reason this blog isn't letting me cut and paste it:

To the Times: Re: Disgraceful Interrogations

Ray Bradbury missed the mark in Farenheit 451, in which firefighters in a dystopian future burn books. As it turns out, it's not books but librarians getting burned, and it's not firefighters but the school district doing the burning. One librarian at a time, their careers are demeaned, their livelihoods shattered, in legal proceedings meant to show that libraries are not "classes", and librarians are not "teachers", and are therefore expendable. All to save our dystopian school district a few bucks, while it squanders millions on new schools (with soon to be empty libraries), grotesquely overpaid administrators who spent us into this mess in the first place, and billable hours for the lawyers conducting this sordid little inquisition. Brian Hudson.

By the way, my husband is a lawyer! Thanks to great support from Susan Ohanian sending out her blog around the country, people posting over 10,000 hits on Facebooks because of Neil Gaiman's tweets on Twitter, the LA Times wants a follow-up article. And another about Roxie Ross's 40 years at Narbonne High School after Tobar was honored at our LASLA Spring Luncheon. One Math professor sent Susan a link from his email about LA librarians calling it "Waterboarding Librarians" - perfect title!! A true gulag as Susan said. Teacher Librarians are being treated to McCarthy-era tactics. It is truly distraceful!! All in the name of busting public employee unions and collective bargaining rights. If LAUSD succeeds with TLs, this tactic will spread. We need to fight for our rights as well as funding for education so this nonsense will stop!

PS - June 29, 2011 -- The Administrative Law Judge presiding on the gulag actually decided that all Teacher Librarians "who testified" were teachers and should have their "reduction in force" designations rescinded. Partial victory for common sense. Thank you Hector Tobar and Michael Bernard, Neil Gaiman and Susan Ohanian, among others. Thank you to the TLs who fought and testified under these horrible conditions.

This Book Is Overdue!!

Marilyn Johnson has written a book in defense of librarians for the 21st century called This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All. CSLA has recommended that all of us read this book for the November conference. I was reading it and trying to pull quotes from it that might be useful. The problem is that every page contains numerous useful quotes than we can use to defend our jobs. Page 1 - "In tough times, a librarian is a terrible thing to waste." This speaks to the great leveling force that librarians play to bring information and materials to everyone, not just the rich. Marilyn Johnson wrote a book about obituaries that she had researched. She says she became interested in librarians because their obituaries stood out among all that she perused. She speaks of "visionaries like Frederick Kilgour, the first to combine libraries' catalogs in one computerized database back in the early seventies." And Judith Krug who "fought censorship for four decades while running the Office for Intellectual Freedom in the Chicago headquarters of the American Library Association (ALA)."
My favorite quote so far is "In a world where information itself is a free-for-all, with traditional news sources going bankrupt and pulishers in trouble, we need librarians more than ever." Librarians can help save democracy from its worse excesses, from the oligarchy of the corporations that it has become. Our value is inestimable. We must continue to fight to save our school and public libraries. In Los Angeles that means supporting our LAPL librarians - www.savethelibrary.org/ Writing letters to Superintendent Cortines and the Board Members of the Los Angeles Unified School District. www.lausd.net Writing letters to the Los Angeles Times and the Daily News are also very helpful. Keep up the fight!! We must win this fight for all of us!!!

Will the arts and libraries be in my granddaughter's future?

There's a scourge on the land and it comes from the top unfortunately. President Obama is facilitating the destruction of public employee unions. I don't think he realizes it but that doesn't matter either. The fact is that our rights as employees are being taken away -- sometimes brutally.

I worked for Los Angeles Unified School District for 30 years. I saw that the lowest paid worker was always the first to lose a job when the economy was in a downturn. Right now the economy is seriously in trouble, particularly in Los Angeles, where unemployment is about 12%, but that's only data from people who are actively looking for jobs. The LAUSD is cutting 50% of the clerical workers, attempting to outsource janitorial duties, and cutting arts and library teachers like crazy. Meanwhile, our students who are largely Latino and African-American are being denied access to quality libraries and music and art in the elementary schools. 250 Library Aides (paraprofessionals) were cut this year alone. And statistically it seems to have fallen hardest in the areas where there are no bookstores, and public libraries are either inferior or inaccessible due to crime. Closing a school library means that there will be no one there to help students find books, teach information literacy, guide them to the right Internet sources, teach them to take notes and research documents and resources, and more. The list is enormous. Technology without a talented librarian is just bells and whistles. Using a cell phone, creating images on the internet, googling and "wikipedia-ing" for all your information is not education. Yes, it teaches some skills, but the depth of education will go down the tubes.

Scariest of all to me is that the Unions are not rising to fight the cuts to education as a group. There needs to be a united effort to keep workers' rights -- and teachers are still workers.

Yesterday LAUSD voted to do away with seniority for teachers. And in fact they do not respect seniority unless it's convenient to their purposes.

To add insult to injury, the City government under Mr. Villaraigosa, is cutting their libraries as well. They, too, seek to destroy the unions that have protected workers.

There is no denying that some workers, teachers, whoever, don't do a good job and deserve to be let go. But let it not be an arbitrary and subjective judgment of a disgruntled principal or supervisor who wants to put in his/her friend instead. This is more often what happens.

There has to be a better way to ensure that workers' rights are protected while students, urban dwellers, and citizens are properly served. We can't solve the problems by cutting off one group's rights to ensure rights of another. All will lose. The quality of life for all will go down. After all, as Cortines, LAUSD superintendent did say, our workers ARE the parents of our students. So are many of the teachers the parents of our students. And we all live in Los Angeles which clearly isn't meeting the needs of its citizens.

I am so afraid that my granddaughter, who starts kindergarten this september, will enter a school without a library and little access to the arts!

A Library Without Books

I hope Dr. David Loertscher won't mind if I quote his email of September 17th about the topic of a library without books:

"Ten Things Worse Than a Library Without Books:

1. A library without a credentialed teacher librarian.

2. A library without information in the formats users prefer.

3. A library that restricts access to information in any format.

4. A library that most teachers ignore.

5. A library that most students Google around.

6. A teacher librarian who is afraid of or ignores the impact of technology.

7. A library that only deals in print materials.

8. A library of antiquated computers and computer networks.

9. A library where tech directors have a big sign back of their desks reading: Just Say NO!

10. An empty library."

Dr. Loertscher has been a leader in bringing teacher librarians into the 21st century. He has inspired many young and not so young to embrace the new technology, engage students in how to use it properly, and so much more. When I studied in library school ten years ago so much of this new technology did not exist. I was slow (Turtle Learner) to embrace it, and now realize how much I could have done in my library had I known more. My school was the most requested Magnet school in Los Angeles unified. However, it had a library that was smaller than most elementary school libraries, and was trying to serve a K-12 population. I knew I needed to embrace computers but I only had space for one for student use. Teachers in elementary school brought their classes, but middle and high school did not. It was lonely and frustrating. I spent the bulk of my time as well processing and ordering and collecting textbooks. Of course, I provided many new materials (those were the days of S080 funding for school libraries) and displayed current and popular titles. I increased the multicultural content of the library. I shared websites constantly with my teachers, especially in middle school. But it was still frustrating. The students at my school were not being served. Now I know I could have provided a library website that students could access in the classroom, or maybe at home, to do research, play games, practice math, and so much more. So, yes, I had many books, but I didn't have enough of what the students wanted, even then. I allowed them to research and print their documents. But they needed much more.

P.S. The image here is an elementary library in the valley of Los Angeles that has a gazebo!