Well, thanks for at least reading my comment.
Front page of Tuesday's Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville's newspaper). You accuse me of being disingenuous, read the Superintendent: ("With tight budgets, some library media specialists serve two schools alternating weeks or days [this is only true in elementary schools, secondary schools overwhlemingly have no one at all] .... Most have risen to the challenge ... and enjoy the variety.”)
Yes, one school is converting this specific space into a testing center. This is not evidence of some trend except for his own biases as to what constitutes a proper media center.
It is/was happening en masse. I only have e-mail screen shots for one school because teachers are generally afraid to come forward because of fear you will exact retribution against them (it's your words, not your position on the issue, that imply you are a DCPS insider).
Sandalwood's libraries actually remain open, just not to the standard "Mike the Teacher" would prefer.
I taught at Sandalwood. The library was not and is not open. Kids could not use the computers or check out books. And if it ever does open again, thousands of the most popular books will be missing (they already are).
The former librarian taught a full load of ESE classes in the library. This means she was not checking out books. Teachers were donating time at random times during the week so kids could use computers, but they were still unable to check out books. If you call this "open", I don't know what to tell you.
This is how Dr. Vitti operates -- even if he had a plan, he implemented it without a transition or stopgap in place. He just yanked out media specialists through a false choice (see below) and left the students without the ability to check out books for two years (and counting).
Donations, fundraisers, book fairs, are all options to bridge any gap in funding that may occur.
I read that sentence as, "Siphoning tax dollars from crucial services towards less crucial services in the hope the community will fill the gap for the important stuff through donations." Unbelievable.
cuts need to be made to reach other state-mandated goals
This is a lie the District is trying very hard to spread.
The Superintendent raised the high school day from 7 classes to 8 (14% increase in classes) without hiring 14% more teachers. This was not state-mandated.
This means Dr. Vitti underfunded teaching positions, then decided that he was going to give principals a "choice" between a media specialist and a teacher (per Khris Brooks at the Times-Union in May 2013).
The Superintendent and school board are required to save 5% of their budget as a "rainy day fund". They decided to save 7% instead, (an extra $62 million).
Cutting these librarians saved $1.8 million savings. You couldn't have taken $1.8 million out of that to pay librarians?
Others "with an agenda" will disagree, but the choice between "class size" and "librarians" seems to clearly be a false dichotomy manufactured by the Superintendent.
What is clear is that this blogger has a clear agenda
Yup, to save the school libraries and make sure we have school leadership in place that is actually serving our students. What's yours?