‼️‼️‼️‼️URGENT! ‼️‼️‼️‼️
The following letter is from our librarian, Fran Ludington. PLEASE share this letter with your friends. This is an urgent budget situation that will affect every elementary student in Amherst. Please discuss with your neighbors, friends, and family ... there are no easy answers!
📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚
"Dear Fort River Families,
I know how very busy you all are, but the elementary school libraries need your support.
The school committee will be presented with the proposed 2016 - 2017 budget on Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 6 PM in the ARHS library. That proposed budget will eliminate the one full-time paraprofessional position in each of the elementary libraries, including Fort River. Each school has been asked to cut $35,000 to help meet the $500,000 deficit in the 2017 Budget. The library paraprofessional is 70% of this cut.
The library team meets with each class every week for 40 minutes. During that time, there is a story or directed lesson and then book checkout. Teachers also come with their classes for additional integration and research projects at other times. Throughout the day, students come to get additional books and some stay to read.
We always supervise the large comfortable space to make sure it is safe and orderly. Daily, we retrieve and shelve hundreds of books. Each book pulled and shelved is a precise act. If it isn't, the library can quickly become useless if each book is not in the right place. A huge thanks to our volunteers who often help with this job.
Many of you know, directly from your students, that our large, rich library is an active place that nurtures children's literacy as well as their developing individual interests. Presently, with an open library, they have time for browsing and sampling all kinds of books; however, this would have to change. In our busy lives, the school library is often a child's only library. Providing regular access to all students is simply a matter of equity.
For decades, Amherst has funded our great elementary libraries. We do have thousands of books and help students find them. A wonderful library without adequate staffing quickly becomes a mess, less and less accessible, soon useless.
If you can, please come support our request for the School Committee and the Amherst Administration to find cuts to the budget that have less direct impact on students. We do not advocate that some other professional or paraprofessional positions be reduced. We have to believe there are alternatives to cutting those with direct contact with students.
The Amherst School Committee meeting is at 6:00 PM, Tuesday, February 9th at the Amherst Regional High School library. The time for public comment is 6:05-6:20 PM.
We hope that a good turnout will be the spark to compel administrators to find other ways to balance the budget.
Thank you,
Fran Ludington
Librarian
ludingtf@arps.org
Fort River"