Kristen Graham's article today in The Philadelphia Inquirer, "Philadelphia schools face additional $39 million budget shortage" illustrates why Library Build's work is so important, and also why Library Build can not rely on the School District to pay the salaries of our librarians.
I think people assume that because Teach for America was able to convince school districts to not only hire un-certified teachers, but to also pay them full teaching salaries, that it must be fairly easy. Wrong. The whole reason we are in this mess is because school districts (not just Philadelphia), have been laying off librarians (and support staff, and music teachers, etc) for decades.
The current shortfall merely just says to me that there really is no way even in the future that the School District will pay for librarians. This must be something that Library Build provides to the schools it works with.
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