This year the superintendent of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District budget recommends removing all library assistants in its secondary schools but gives local principals the option to choose another position instead. In six of those nine schools, the principals have made what we think is the wrong decision and are cutting their Library Assistants next school year. We need your help today to contact those principals and ask them to reverse these misguided and unhelpful cuts. North Star Borough students need better libraries not less staff helping them learn, grow and succeed.
Cutting these Library Assistant positions will make it impossible for the librarians in those schools to continue serving students and teachers at full capacity. With thousands of students walking through the library’s doors every day, one person cannot do it all. Today’s school librarians don’t just check out books to students. They are a dynamic, innovative force in our schools. Without the Library Assistants by their sides, those six school libraries will not be able to stay open before school, after school, or even during lunch.
Here at EveryLibrary, we stand with the community of educators and school library supporters across the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District to ask your help restoring these cuts. If we don’t, librarians will no longer be able to leave the library to assist with school-wide technology needs - and there are no other building-level personnel with these skills. Librarians, who are certified teaching staff, will be spending their time cataloging and processing books instead of planning collaborative instruction with teachers. And FNBSD students will miss out on important programs that engage them with coding, making, and reading, will drastically reduce in quantity.
Please add your name to the petition on this page. We are sharing it with the board and superintendent of the Fairbanks North Borough School District, and the principals for Ben Eielson Jr/Sr High; North Pole Middle; North Pole High; Randy Smith Middle; Ryan Middle; and Hutchison High Schools. This issue affects people across the school district. Standing together as parents and stakeholders in the future of education, we can fix this problem and ensure that students have access to the library programs they deserve. But only if FNBSD has the Library Assistants on staff they need. Thanks for taking this important step today and signing the petition.