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Literacy priorities and deployment of school librarians
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Council Member Restler questions the DOE about the relationship between literacy priorities, the presence of librarians, and how librarians are deployed to schools based on literacy needs.
- Literacy is confirmed as the mayor's top priority for the DOE
- DOE agrees that librarians improve literacy outcomes
- Restler questions why there's been no improvement in librarian numbers despite the focus on literacy
- DOE explains that principals make budgetary decisions about hiring librarians
- A citywide digital library initiative is mentioned as an alternative resource
Lincoln Restler
1:48:55
Can I just do one more topic if that's okay?
1:48:57
Literacy.
1:48:58
I think we would say that the mayor's top priority at the DOE in his three plus years has been literacy.
1:49:04
Is that right?
1:49:05
That a fair characterization?
Cordelia Veve
1:49:08
That is.
Lincoln Restler
1:49:08
That is.
1:49:09
Okay.
1:49:10
And we would all agree that the presence of librarians in our schools improves our literacy outcomes.
1:49:14
Is that right?
Cordelia Veve
1:49:16
We agree.
Lincoln Restler
1:49:17
Great.
1:49:17
So why okay.
1:49:19
So we agree that literacy is the mayor's number one priority.
1:49:22
That presence of librarians in schools improves literacy outcomes.
1:49:26
Why has there been no improvement in the actual presence of librarians in our schools over these three years?
1:49:31
And then I'll go a level further.
1:49:33
Do you all analyze the presence, what schools have librarians based on the literacy data in those school districts and in those schools?
1:49:44
Are we sending our certified school librarians on a needs basis to the 250 schools that are struggling the most around literacy goals and prioritizing those places for where we're deploying our librarians?
1:49:57
How are we making those decisions?
1:49:58
Is there a correlation between our inadequate literacy outcomes and where we're deploying our very limited school librarians?
Cordelia Veve
1:50:09
Well, so I think first off, again, budgetary decisions are at the hands of the principal.
1:50:17
And so principals make decisions about whether they're hiring a librarian or not.
1:50:22
And so when we're talking about those two fifty certified librarians they may already be in place in libraries.
1:50:31
Can't at will re disperse them to other schools.
1:50:35
What we can do is as we think about the teacher to librarian pipeline is where we think about where do those graduating librarians go and think about do we send those to the schools that are most in need.
Melissa Jacobs
1:50:50
Can I add to that?
Lincoln Restler
1:50:51
Please.
Melissa Jacobs
1:50:52
In addition to that, we've developed a citywide digital library on Sora, and every student in New York City public schools has access to the collection of over 50,000 titles with millions of copies of materials.
1:51:05
And we've circulated over 2,000,000 titles just in this school year alone.