Las Vegas area CBS affiliate KLAS reports that the association of school librarians in the Clark County School District was present in recent meetings. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported yesterday that the district is holding meetings to gauge parent views on what should be cut due to financial shortfalls. The librarians went to gauge the risk to their jobs as local television reports have noted that parents are strongly considering already terminating art and music education in schools.
The district has posted a chart with cuts under consideration. It is noted there that cutting out middle school and high school librarians would save the district USD$9,510,215. The argument present in favor of cutting such librarians is that teachers or support staff could maintain libraries.
Clark County School District’s boundaries are coterminous with the boundaries of Clark County in Nevada. The district serves Nevada’s population center. According to the US Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, as of the 2005-2006 school year the district had 314 schools and served over two hundred and ten thousand students.
Clark County School Library Cuts
Ummmm….I vote to cut administrators’ salaries and per diem! Let’s cut the overtimes teachers get for Yard Duty and PTA!
Libraries, music & art are just as important as advanced math & science! Not everyone is going to be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon (after all…isn’t this the county that boasts Las Vegas…) Maybe someone is going to a concierge, a hotel maid, a lounge singer, an interior designer, or even (Gasp) a Librarian! Take away art & music & literature…then what?
There is a wonderful Library quote: “Libraries will get you through times of no money, better than money will get you through times of no libraries”
There is a ton of discussion
What is a best minimum education? In terms of headcount, there are few other peer school districts in the US. There are seemingly more school buses plying the roads than mass transit.
Nobody has a good answer to this one. This mere county also has the majority of the state’s school librarians. The only other counties with school districts approaching this mass would be Washoe County (Reno) and Elko County (Elko). If seen at the state level, school media librarianship in Nevada overall could be quite severely damaged if such a cut happens.
Yes, this is very much the county home not only to Las Vegas but also Henderson, North Las Vegas, Boulder City, and even Laughlin. It is big and has a ton of issues in terms of population distribution. The district has to serve hundreds of thousands of students across a mix of urban, suburban, and rural populations.
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Um, this is interesting
While I will applaud that they are looking at a number of areas to cut (including the near untouchable athletics!), I find it a bit concerning that there are no mentions of cutting ANY administrative staff other than the multiple deans at some schools (administrative, not “professional). Furthermore, there does not seem to be any mention of facilities changes. They have 314 schools and none of them are redundant? Please.
That’s the most recent figure US Dept. of Ed. has
On the ground here, I believe the current estimate of buildings is 334. All of them are pretty jam packed.
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I find that a bit odd. When
I find that a bit odd. When a school district expands it tends to end up with a lot of under and overutilized schools because of the new schools being built and changes in demographics. I am surprised that they have not (from the quick searches I ran) suggested closing some to better utilize the space.
Depends upon which demographics you looked at
Henderson is larger than Las Vegas and has more residents. There is also the separate municipality of North Las Vegas which had a problem a couple months ago of planes crashing. The demographics of Clark County include way more than the relatively small City of Las Vegas let alone The Strip which is known as Paradise Township.
Our local population is approaching two million. Most of the high schools have classrooms packed with 35-40 students per one teacher now. Census estimates under “quick facts” can be found at the county level at http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/32/32003.html .
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LV – CCSD to let HS and MS librarians go
Well, it started w/ the Mesa School District in Arizona. Other smaller districts have followed suit across the nation.
Now, Las Vega’s Clark County School District is seriously considering chopping librarians at middle and high schools. I work as an adjunct at the College of Southern Nevada, a community college. I see the results of the Google-Yahoo-Wikipedia age.
These students entering college cannot do research. They do not even know the first steps to evaluate websites, much less do searches on Gale or EBSCO!
I fear for the future…
nothing new
Libraries always face the budget axe first while programs that serve much smaller groups of people tend to be untouched until much later.
Who was it who said that you can measure how “civilized and advanced’ a nation is by counting the number of libraries and museums that existed in that place. I think it was Weber. By that standard Zagreb, Croatia, rates a lot higher than many other places on the planet.
The real shame is
That currently libraries are seeing sudden record spikes in their use, while bookstores are seeing their quarterly income crashing.