IRVINE : Board Urged to Spare Libraries From Cuts

About 100 parents and employees filled the Irvine Unified School District board meeting room Wednesday night to defend imperiled school libraries in the face of a proposed $3-million budget cut for the next school year.

Layoffs of employees at elementary and middle school libraries--now called media centers in the district--are under consideration along with a long list of programs and services not legally required of public schools.

With $107 million frozen in the bankrupt county investment pool, Irvine Unified could lose $10.7 million, according to Deputy Supt. Paul Reed. The school board will vote March 7 on approximately $3 million in budget cuts from the district’s $100-million budget. Decisions on layoffs will not be made until the March 21 school board meeting.

Teachers argue that media centers are not just checking out books anymore. They say the old-fashioned school library has become a center for high-tech information retrieval in the age of the information superhighway.

But district budget planners say the media centers could remain open with volunteer workers. Many of the district’s media centers already rely on volunteers to operate, according to district officials.

School board members were criticized Wednesday night for publicly supporting at a meeting last week such programs as middle school Drug Abuse Resistance Education, while not protecting others from cuts. But school board veteran Margie Wakeham said nothing is “sacrosanct” as long as uncertainties remain about district losses from the county bankruptcy.

“We may we have led the public to believe that there are certain things that are off the list,” Wakeham said. “But until we know what the size of the problem is, I personally don’t believe that we can make those kinds of decisions.”