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Budget cuts have cost many Hernando schools their media specialists

 
Published Sept. 16, 2015

SPRING HILL — Media specialists are beginning to slip away from Hernando County schools.

One who is still in business, Debbye Warrell at Challenger K-8 School of Science and Mathematics, admitted that she was nervous until the end of June, when she learned she still had a job.

With funding growing tighter by the year, each school had no choice but to cut an instructional position this year, Warrell said.

Eastside Elementary School principal Mary LeDoux said Hernando County is 50th out of 64 school districts when it comes to per-student state funding. "There's a very complicated formula," she said, and Hernando does not fare well — thus the cuts.

Some schools chose to eliminate their media specialists — better known to some as librarians. Those without specialists this year include Brooksville Elementary, Chocachatti Elementary, Westside Elementary, Nature Coast Technical High, Hernando High and Weeki Wachee High.

Powell Middle School did not have a media specialist last year, and remains without one this year. Springstead High's media specialist retired, but that school gained the one cut at Westside. At Pine Grove Elementary, the media specialist has been asked to take on art and music responsibilities.

"Our county is facing a very difficult situation," Warrell said. "Our county is trying with the best of its ability, (but) sometimes tough decisions have to be made."

Warrell did say that all of the media specialists who were cut still have jobs, filling other instruction roles.

Warrell, who was featured in a national media magazine for building her school's media center from scratch, is also president of the Hernando County Education Foundation. She says it will be difficult for schools that have lost their media specialists.

"The skills that are taught in the media center are critical for helping our students become college and career ready," she said. "Everything I do ties in with the classroom teachers."

The media specialist job description covers three typed pages, plus a bit of a fourth. The person is expected, among other things, to select and order books, provide professional development to colleagues and teachers, create and administer the library budget, teach library and research skills, troubleshoot technology, and manage and maintain the computer lab.

Perhaps most importantly, though, the media specialist's job is to encourage reading.

"The more kids read," Warrell said, "the more access they have to books and that information, the more they do better on tests."

Westside Elementary School principal Kristina Garofano, whose school lost its media specialist to Springstead, said she and a team of staffers got together to discuss the school's required instructional reduction.

"There's no good place to cut," Garofano said. "We came up with a plan where our students will have access to books."

Westside will have a paraprofessional in the media center to check books in and out.

When a school loses staff, those who remain must step in to fill the void.

"Every single person on this campus has to take on new responsibilities," Garofano said. "It's really how we can keep the same benefits at our school."

When LeDoux took the principal's job at Eastside, the school had been without a media specialist, and it had received an F grade from the state. The media specialist position was reinstated. Eastside's grade went up to a C, and LeDoux sees a connection.

"I'm thrilled I was given that when I came here," she said. "For me, having been at all levels of school, I can tell you that the media center is the hub of all schools."

That is especially true in Title I schools, she explained, where students do not always have parents at home who read to them.

"Kids are constantly in the library," LeDoux said. "Reading supports every subject area there is. It is hugely important."