The Oregon Education Investment Board is holding community forums throughout Oregon to gather feedback about the Education Funding Team’s “Summary Recommendations to the Governor” and to hear from community members about their priorities for public education. Meetings continue through October, with the last meeting scheduled for November 5th. For a schedule of meetings, go to the OEIB website’s “Public Outreach Meetings.” Input may also be emailed to <education.investment@state.or.us>. Follow the OEIB on Twitter: @orlearns.
I attended and spoke at the October 18th community forum held at the former Marshall High School campus. A short video from Dr. Rudy Crew, Oregon’s Chief Education Officer was shared. Several of his points tie in perfectly with quality school libraries: preparing students for the 21st century and a global world and being literate by grade five. The Education Funding Team’s Powerpoint from the 10/9/12 OEIB meeting was also shared, with “Strategic Investments” in the following areas:
- Regional “Student Achievement Centers” to develop a representative corps of professional educators
- “OregonReads”, a statewide campaign focused on early grade reading [see pp. 4-6 of the Summary Recommendations to the Governor for more information]
- Supports for evidence-based programs that engage and empower parents and students
- Innovative models for grades 9-14 to ensure essential skills for global success
Speaker after speaker shared concerns about overly large class sizes and cuts that have been made to important programs, urging the OEIB to help fix the funding issues for public education in Oregon. Oregon Save Our Schools distributed a document comparing “How OEIB wants to spend OUR money vs. How WE want to spend OUR money.” Oregon S.O.S. proposes adding back teachers, counselors and librarians in place of a statewide longitudinal data system and the money required to implement the “strings” of the NCLB waiver.
Each speaker was given two minutes, so I shortened what I shared at the OASL conference.
Good evening. My name is Jenny Takeda. As Oregon’s District Librarian of the Year, I decided my message about school libraries needed to extend beyond the library community.October is Information Literacy Month in Oregon. With the ever-increasing tsunami of available information online, students now more than ever need to learn how to identify the best information resources, sort through that information, evaluate it for bias and reliability and synthesize it into their own work.Licensed school librarians are trained to equip students with information literacy skills so they can be independent researchers, critical thinkers and effective communicators using a full range of media and technology tools. Unfortunately, due to ongoing school funding constraints, many Oregon schools have lost their school librarian positions over time. According to the 2011 “QEM and Libraries” report published by the State Library, the number of licensed school librarians in Oregon had fallen in 2009 by 61% since 1980 . That percentage is even higher today with cuts to school librarian positions in Salem-Keizer and Beaverton.The “QEM and Libraries” report also outlines the minimum criteria for quality school libraries. These include licensed librarian staffing, library support staff and materials expenditures. Only five of the 1,303 Oregon school libraries in 2009-2010 met these guidelines. When school librarian positions are cut, the teaching of these critical information literacy skills often falls by the wayside because classroom teachers have so many other demands on their instructional time.Our students deserve high-quality school libraries as a piece of the complete educational environment preparing them to become our future doctors, scientists, teachers and community leaders. For more information about how quality school libraries contribute to student achievement, please visit <https://learnforlife.info>. As the OEIB considers Oregon’s vision for public education, please include school libraries in those discussions and call upon experts from the school library field to be part of that visioning process. Thank you.