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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For almost two decades now, there have been stories about the declining number of libraries and librarians in New York City's public schools. As of 2023 last year, there were only roughly 260 certified school librarians in a school system consisting of 1,600 schools, according to the education news website Chalkbeat. Educators and advocates are clear that the lack of school librarians has far-reaching consequences for New York City's public school students in their opinion.

School libraries and librarians promote various types of literacy, for example, from beginning readers to high-school-age students. Even though New York State law requires schools to have a library and a certified librarian, advocates are alarmed at the lack of enforcement and funding. Now, there's a new bill in the New York City Council that would require New York City's Department of Education to at least report on the number of school librarians across the school system annually.

We'll talk about that bill as well as New York City's lack of school librarians and its potential consequences generally with Jenny Fox, children's book editor and author and the co-founder of Librarians Equals Literacy or Librarians = Literacy might be the correct Conjugation there, a group that advocates for the staffing and funding of certified school librarians in New York City public schools. Jenny, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Jenny Fox: Hi, Brian, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: You've got the equal sign in there in the group name. Is it Librarians "Equal" Literacy or Librarians "Equals" Literacy?

Jenny Fox: It's equal. No S. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: Okay, for the plural librarians. Listeners, we're going to open up the phones right away for anyone on the topic of the city's lack of school libraries and school librarians. School librarians, anybody listening who does that for a living or whoever did that for a living, you'll get first priority. 212-433-WNYC. Why is the work you did or the work you do so important and what do you think the consequences are of the lack of funding for school libraries in New York City?

Librarians, past school librarians, educators, or past educators of any type. Parents, we definitely want to hear from you. Parents, you could call up with a story of how your kids use the library at school or how you think they have benefited from the presence of a personal human being who's the librarian, 212-433-WNYC, or do you think it doesn't matter? 212-433-9692. Call or text. Jenny, is that really the law? There has to be a school librarian in every school and they're just breaking the law?

Jenny Fox: There's a state mandate in place that says every middle and high school are required to have a certified librarian on staff as well as the library. For elementary schools, the requirement is just the library. I don't know exactly how the library is supposed to run itself without a librarian, but that is the state mandate and many schools are in violation of that.

Brian Lehrer: The number again of certified school librarians in New York City schools as of 2023 was just 260, according to Chalkbeat, compared to 1,600 schools. What would the bill in city council actually change?

Jenny Fox: The bill in city council that they're discussing is requiring the DOE to actually report the data on which schools have librarians, which schools have functioning libraries, and which students in those schools have access to the library weekly. There are cases in which there's a librarian in, say, a shared campus or a school where not all the students are receiving time in the library. Just some of the students are.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and how did you come to this work, advocating for school libraries and librarians? Why do you think this is important? What did you do before and why do you think this is important?

Jenny Fox: I have always been a book person and a library person and my elementary school librarian was very important to me. I just know that it's a space where kids can feel seen. It's a counterpoint to the classroom. Certified librarians have a different skill set than classroom teachers. They emphasize reading for pleasure. They also teach important lessons in research skills. They also are the only people trained in the building to curate a culturally responsive collection of books. They also serve as support to their fellow teachers and staff.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call.

Jenny Fox: Sure.

Brian Lehrer: Here is Cindy in Long Valley, New Jersey. You're on WNYC. Hi, Cindy.

Cindy: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking the call. I just wanted to bring something up that is going a little bit upstream from what you're discussing. I have an adult daughter who forever wanted to be a librarian, had a job as a teenager in a library, and also volunteered. When we looked into schools that offer library and media studies, the average cost per year was $65,000 a year for one year of college.

Brian Lehrer: Whoa.

Cindy: It was a four-year degree, yes. Then when we looked at some of even the most highest-paying school districts like Mountain Lakes in New Jersey, for example, the money that a librarian makes coming out of school, they cannot afford to pay back any school loans. I think if the salary was commensurate with being able to pay back the loan and she was willing to live at our home for two years after school in order to be able to do this, but the pay wasn't there. It's sad for actually the whole family. My kids love the library, summer programs, everything.

Brian Lehrer: Really important.

Cindy: I just wanted to bring that up.

Brian Lehrer: No, I'm glad you told that story.

Cindy: Yes, I wanted to bring that up.

Brian Lehrer: Cindy, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I'll get a follow-up answer from our guest now. Jenny, I guess we've been talking about the low number of school librarians as a demand-side issue. In other words, the Department of Education in the city is not deciding to hire school librarians. The story that Cindy tells us raises the question at least as if there's also a supply-side problem. Are people not becoming school librarians maybe because of the cost of the education compared to how much the job pays and there's a shortage when there is an opening?

Jenny Fox: I think we have to create the jobs. Like any teaching position, we have to value our teachers and pay our teachers and fund our schools properly. I think if we started doing that, then people would be filling the jobs.

Brian Lehrer: You think there is a shortage of librarians, but if there was more confidence that those jobs would continue to exist or expand that more people would go to library school despite the cost?

Jenny Fox: I think the problem that we've seen mostly in the city is actually schools that can't pay their librarian and are losing librarians. In 2005, there was 1,500 librarians in the New York City school system. Continually, we hear from parents and other librarians that their jobs are being cut. There, you have the person. It's not a pipeline thing. The librarian exists and their job is being cut.

Brian Lehrer: If this number is 260 certified school librarians out of 1,600 schools in New York City, Chalkbeat's number, what is a certified school librarian? Do you have to get a master's degree?

Jenny Fox: Yes, they have a master's degree in library science. There are situations where classroom teachers are also running libraries. The Chalkbeat number includes only certified librarians that were listed in school budgets. There could be other situations where there is a trained pedagogue in the library running it that isn't a certified librarian. There could be also other situations where PTAs are paying for generally part-time librarians.

Brian Lehrer: Christine in Brooklyn, a school librarian, you're on WNYC. Hi, Christine. Thank you for calling.

Christina: Hi there. I'm Christina. I'm one of the school librarians at a large high school here in South Brooklyn. I'm calling because my library is great for my students. We have author visits. We have a makerspace where students can do all sorts of activities. We have a large selection of books. The students provide their input and we bring in things that they're interested in reading for pleasure, which is great for my students.

What about all the other students in so many other schools across the city who don't have access to libraries? It's disappointing that sometimes kids will come to us and say, "This is the first time I've ever had a library in my school," or "I had one in elementary, but not middle," or "I had one in middle, but not in elementary." All students deserve access to a library in the library and in every school.

The new chancellor at one time was one of my principals years ago. I worked in a different school. She really paid attention to the library when she became superintendent. She checked in with the library and gave us support. I'm hoping that with her in office, maybe we'll see a focus on school libraries. Whereas with our previous chancellor, he would talk about literacy, but he would always leave out the school library part of that equation.

Brian Lehrer: Huh, interesting. Interesting that the new chancellor has that background. Christina, I'm curious, and I think a lot of listeners might be curious, what does the job entail? What do you do day-to-day as a high school librarian?

Christina: Every day is different. Some days, we are teaching lessons about research, about information literacy, about how to find the best sources or how to avoid misinformation. Some days, we are working one-on-one with students. Maybe a student is working on a research project and they have a lot of specific questions for us. Maybe they're just having questions about tech skills, how to use the computer, how to format a résumé.

We create collections of books. Sometimes for teachers, sometimes for students. We create displays of books that will catch students' interest. We have a lot of volunteers, so we're working with the volunteers. It's a very dynamic position as compared to a classroom teacher. In the classroom, you're constrained by your curriculum. In the library, it's a "choose your own adventure" based on what the students' and teachers' and communities' needs are.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call. Thank you, Christina.

Christina: Yes, thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Anything you want to add to that, Jenny, about what school librarians actually do day-to-day, especially at the high school level, which I guess is where there's the biggest perceived shortage if I understand your position right?

Jenny Fox: I would say, at the high school level, one of the biggest issues is that our kids are not learning very critical research skills that they need. There's been studies that show now approximately one in three students, when they get to college, is prepared to do a research project. That number drops to one in four if we look at community colleges. I think that's a super important part of librarianship in the upper grades.

As Christina is saying, they do all these amazing things. There's amazing social-emotional benefits when kids are allowed to have choice and autonomy that promotes their joy and pleasure reading, which, as we know lately, there has been an article about how pleasure reading has dropped off with the advent of phones and with fewer libraries. I think it's a balance between these educational skills and these social-emotional skills that the school librarians provide.

Brian Lehrer: Lawrence in Brooklyn Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lawrence.

Lawrence: Hey, hi. I just called to make a point. I gave your screener my credentials to make this point, so I won't go over that again. You will find that in certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn Heights where I live, in Park Slope, on the Upper West Side, on the Upper East Side, there are libraries and librarians in public schools. In East New York, there won't be. New York City public schools are ostensibly all funded equally. That is a question massively worth addressing. It can't be separated from what your guest, who is great, was saying. It just seems like massive open discrimination to me. I don't understand how we address this question without addressing that.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Lawrence. Well, let's address it. Is there data on equity, is what Lawrence purports that the higher-income areas, public schools have more school librarians than those in, he uses East New York as an example, other low-income parts of the city?

Jenny Fox: Yes, he's definitely onto something. In the Chalkbeat article, they also said, and I'll quote, "More than 81% of schools with poverty rates higher than 75% did not have a librarian staff member budgeted." That was roughly six percentage points higher than schools with lower poverty rates. This is a trend that's occurring nationally as well. It's definitely certain schools have them more than others. That is certainly part of why we want this data. We want to know where the librarians are, where the functioning libraries are, who's got them and who doesn't. Until we can look at that whole landscape, we can't begin to address this problem. There's definitely an equity issue going on.

Brian Lehrer: Where does that equity issue come from? Doesn't state law mandate a certain amount, or city law, a certain amount of equity and education funding? Is it that librarians at this point are paid and hired out of PTA funds in some cases, which would favor the richer districts?

Jenny Fox: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, yes?

Jenny Fox: In some cases, they are. That's for sure. In some cases, maybe the parents are advocating more. It could be enrollment. The funding is tied to how many students you have in your school. There's a price basically on each kid's head. It could be a number of these factors. Until we know what's really going on and get a picture of it, we can't really start to unpick it.

Brian Lehrer: Lamour in Astoria, you're on WNYC. Hello, Lamour.

Lamour: Hi, Brian, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good, thank you.

Lamour: Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Lamour: Okay, so I've been in a couple of schools in rich neighborhoods as well as poor. I definitely agree with a number of your callers who said not all libraries are created equally. I think the problem is so layered in that the libraries that I've been in, they don't have any books there. They're just like a ruin. They're in ruin. Some of the older schools in poor neighborhoods, there is a librarian, but he's not really doing anything but keeping people quiet, making sure there's order.

Before we can talk about getting librarians, we also need to address the fact that, what are they going to be librarians of? Empty shelves of spaces that once were? We need to talk about getting books in the schools and getting the library up to speed for 2025 or for this century because none of the libraries that I visited in poorer ZIP codes are anywhere close to that.

However, you go to some schools like maybe The Anderson School on the Upper West Side and it's a different situation. We need to talk about getting the libraries equipped enough to attract a librarian who's worth her weight and who went through the education process to become a librarian. Because at this juncture, yes, you need more librarians, but librarians of what? I'll take my time--

Brian Lehrer: Well, let me ask you a follow-up question, Lamour. When you say, "Librarians of what," and with the story you just told, do you mean librarians of actual books as opposed to librarians who help people use the internet?

Lamour: All of the above because there are very little books and there are people waiting to get on there. There might be one computer in the library, two, three, compared to a school of 1,000 kids and equipment that once was covered up. I went to a beautiful historic school I visited here in Astoria. It was a beautiful structure. They were using one large, very large room for tutors. There was another place where kids sat in the middle of the library. They just hung out and did whatever they were doing, but there was no librarian going on. The librarian there was just keeping order if you needed a key to something. It was very little going on that related to being a skilled librarian.

Brian Lehrer: Lamour, thank you very much. Very important input. Let's see. We have so many stories coming in. Let me take one or two more before we run out of time. Here is Nina in Valhalla in Westchester. You're on WNYC. Hi, Nina.

Nina: Hi. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Nina: Great. I'm a certified school librarian. I currently work at a community college in Westchester. I had almost 40 years in middle schools and high schools. My most recent 35 years was in Northern Westchester in the suburban public school system. I spent 27 years in the middle school. They moved me to the high school after that. At the same time, they cut at least one elementary librarian. They started cutting positions.

As a result, skills were not being taught in the same way. About two years into my high school stint, the principal came to me reporting that-- not me, but I would have said it ahead of time, but all the teachers, especially English and social studies teachers, were coming to him saying, "Our kids just don't have these skills anymore. What's going on?" Of course, the answer was that they had started cutting librarians.

The ironic part of his commentary was that in the early days before the cuts were started when we had five schools, five full-time librarians, some paraprofessional help, help e-collections and all the rest. At that time when we were fighting to maintain and justify that staffing level, he thought and he said this explicitly that if they cut librarians at the other lower levels, it wouldn't bother him. It wouldn't affect him or his students because the state regulations state that as a high school, he would always have a full-time librarian.

Then he realized after the fact that probably that was not going to happen. Because if the kids weren't getting the skills from the beginning, then they weren't going to have sufficient skills when they got to the high school. That was the reality of the situation. Now, at the community college level, I find that a lot of the students here, when I teach a class for entry-level students, I'm teaching a lot of the same classes literally, a lot of the same lessons that I would have taught in the high school.

Brian Lehrer: Take us one level even more deeply into your story, Nina, if you can. My question is if you found and others found that literacy rates or the quality of literacy was declining after the librarians got removed, why is that? Because a lot of listeners might think, "Well, a librarian is great to have and a school library is great to have, but it's the teachers, the classroom teachers who teach reading, who teach basic literacy. It's not the librarian's job." How would you respond to that?

Nina: In a whole bunch of different ways. If we're just talking about reading, the love of reading, there's teaching students to read physically, to decode, to comprehend. Students who develop a lifelong love of reading learn to read extensively and widely and with their own choice. That happens through a library. That's what we nurture in a school library or in any library, so cutting librarians or not giving them the time and the space and the resources to work with students individually to nurture.

I had students I can still see, students I knew what their favorite stories were. I would get parent calls or a teacher would say to me, "This student doesn't want to read or can't find anything he or she likes or they like." They would send the student to me. 15 minutes later, that student would leave with a list of books that they thought was potentially enjoyable because I was the one who was able to nurture that. I had the massive collection that I had curated, as your guest has spoken about, that I had intentionally curated for those students.

More than the love of reading, it's really about the critical thinking and the research skills. I had done alignment studies, curriculum mapping as we call. I did spend time teaching, even at a K1 and 2 level as well, where I learned that when I was teaching at the middle-school level, which was most of my career, that I would be teaching them research skills, how to think about a question, how to problem-solve that, how to develop strategies to find information, to evaluate information, to then do something productive with it.

I learned that that actually happens from nurturing curiosity in a primary child, in a five-year-old, in a six-year-old, and then getting them to understand how to ask questions and to be encouraged to do that and then to follow through with that. I'm still teaching at the college level. I'm still teaching students how to ask questions, how to ask new questions, how to ask different questions, how to be skeptical and curious. There's another piece to that, which is that as the single person-- Well, there are two more pieces. As the single person in the school building, generally speaking, I was also a resource to my teachers. I was having conversations with them and teaching them skills.

In the early days when Google was first coming into the school system, I didn't name myself this, they named me the "Google guru" because I was the one sharing those skills with teachers and all different kinds of online tools and different resources. Classroom teachers have their domain, but my domain was to be a support to them. Because if I'm a support to the teachers, then I'm going to have access as a school librarian to their children in new and different ways besides the once-a-week, "Come and pick a book." Lots of pieces to that.

Brian Lehrer: That was awesome. Nina, thank you very much. Jenny, as we run out of time, I don't think we could have had a better, more detailed discourse there on the importance of school librarians. Any last thought on how people can get involved if they want to support the city council bill, which might wind up adding more school librarians, directly or indirectly, as state rules say are supposed to be in every school?

Jenny Fox: Absolutely. I would suggest everyone, reach out to their own city council members. The bill is being sponsored by Councilman Restler and Councilwoman Rita Joseph, who is the education chair for the city council. Support them. Support the bill. Reach out to your own city council people to support the bill. I just wanted to mention also that in Washington, DC, they adopted legislation to include librarians in all their schools. In 2021, Boston announced plans to have librarians in all their schools by 2026.

Philadelphia just hired a new director of library science who's focused specifically on addressing this issue in their school system. Right now, in Chicago, where 80% of the public schools don't have a librarian, the teachers union is in contract talks with the city. One of their demands is to have full-time, centrally-funded librarian in every school. New York City really needs to stop hiding this problem. We need to bring this information out into the light so we can start to address it.

Brian Lehrer: Jenny Fox is co-founder of Librarians = Literacy, also a children's book editor and author. Napoleon Vs. the Bunnies, is that you?

Jenny Fox: That's me. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: Napoleon Vs. the Bunnies. The Van Buren Sisters Vs. the Pants Police, that's you?

Jenny Fox: Yes, also me.

Brian Lehrer: The Pharaoh vs. the Felines, which you say is "hiss-tory" versus the felines.

Jenny Fox: I love a good pun.

Brian Lehrer: Okay, so now you know some of Jenny Foxx's books as well as her advocacy. Thank you so much for joining us.

Jenny Fox: Thank you for having us.

 

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