My Point of View, By Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

“What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education.” — Harold Howe, commissioner of education under Lyndon B. Johnson

In mid-April, Albert Lea’s school board voted to cut the high school media specialist position. Next year, the high school and middle school, with over 1,500 students, will be served by one media specialist who also teaches .6 at Southwest. Her role will only be .2 at the high school, and a media clerk position will remain at each building. The Albert Lea Tribune reported, “(Executive Director of Administrative Services Jim) Quiram said this consolidation is not a reduction in media services, but in the position itself.”

It’s hard to believe that cutting a full-time professional staff position will not result in a reduction of media services. While I am personal friends with the outgoing high school media specialist, I am more broadly a defender of librarians’ work to promote a literate and informed citizenry who can sustain democracy.

The role of media specialist is changing rapidly but is just as important as ever. New ways to access information are constantly emerging. The drive to help teachers integrate STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art + Design, and Mathematics) into their curriculum has morphed some media specialists into “media techs.”

Since information is more accessible than ever before, students need help less with searching, perhaps, and more with netting the most valuable information without being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data or distracted by attention-sucking clickbait. As NPR’s Linton Weeks quipped, “In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us to swim.”

Middle-grade and young adult genres are also exploding, and media specialists choose the best titles to tempt reluctant readers and feed voracious ones in these distinct age groups. Independent reading is essential to cultivate because it’s directly correlated with student achievement.

It seems rather than the high school cut being “not a reduction in services,” it’s a matter of other spending priorities taking its place. From my conversations with ALHS Principal Mark Grossklaus and Director of Secondary Programs Kathy Niebuhr, it seems that the district wants to minimize cuts in the classroom, and this is the trade-off.

Alexandria Area High School came up in both of these conversations. The school no longer has a centralized library and could not find a media specialist. Books are “pushed out” into kiosks in commons areas, where students borrow materials on the honor system. This handling of a public collection seems like it could have significant drawbacks in maintenance and measurement of usage.

Wondering what that bodes for us, I asked about future plans for our high school library. Mr. Grossklaus said the library design is “[school] board-driven,” and there are no plans to take it apart. That is a relief, and something to keep an eye on.

Another district priority has been Chromebooks. The 1-to-1 Chromebooks at the middle and high school are a good way to bridge the “digital divide” among students, and they opened up needed classroom space at the high school where a couple computer labs could be disassembled. But technology, no matter how flashy or current, can’t replace the expertise and judgement of a media specialist. It’s merely a tool.

When it comes to technology, I always turn to this wisdom of George W. Bush: “Rarely is the question asked, ‘Is our children learning?’”

Our students’ reading scores at the high school were below expected (according to the Star Tribune’s analysis of MCA tests) for our poverty rate last year. Hopefully scores will show improvement this year. Nevertheless, study after study has demonstrated that professional media staff increases student achievement school-wide, particularly in reading. In addition, students who are readers are more likely to gain in terms of cognitive skills and social mobility over time.

If we’ve learned anything from Facebook’s hotseat, technology itself is not the answer. In fact, it’s rife with new pitfalls for our brains, which are adapting as well as can be expected at the staid pace of human evolution. Meanwhile, computing power has followed Moore’s law (doubling the number of transistors on an integrated circuit, which boosts processing speed, every two years) for the past 50 years and counting. Unsurprisingly, in today’s digital environment, our brains are vulnerable to hacking in ever more inventive ways.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who successfully navigated the U.S. through the clashing rocks of the Great Depression and World War II, stated in 1942 that libraries are “essential to the functioning of a democratic society” and “the great symbols of the freedom of the mind.”

Much has changed, and much has stayed the same, and librarians are still guides for a free and future ready society. The school board’s cut is indeed a reduction in valuable services.

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.