VAVPA PTA feels strongly about the need for some reasonable and common sense policies to promote student achievement and cut costs. Given the great turnover of personnel in the district in the past year, We are troubled about the proposal to reduce library tech support this coming year.
We support the CA State Education code’s mandate to provide school library services for the pupils and teachers of the district. The CA Department of Education reports that more than 60 research studies throughout the nation, from Alaska to North Carolina to California, have shown that students in schools with good school libraries learn more, get better grades, and score higher on standardized tests than their peers in schools without libraries. Douglas Achterman’s 2008 doctoral dissertation on student achievement in California, titled “Haves, Halves and Have-Nots: School Libraries and Student Achievement,” found that the greater the number of library services offered, the higher students’ scores tended to be.
As VAVPA's PTA, we urge you to vote NO on the proposal to cut library technician hours this coming academic year so that the plan to digitize libraries can be reviewed and implemented without concern of violating the Williams Act, which stipulates that there must be "sufficient textbooks and instructional materials. That means each pupil, including English learners, must have a textbook or instructional materials, or both, to use in class and to take home.” We are concerned that many of our students who benefit from our school libraries will not be able to afford Ipads or the technology that will be the standard. This raises several concerns, including the problem of creating a ‘separate and unequal’ learning environment.
Thank you for your consideration of this important issue of educational stability, equity and access.