Library Workers Say New Hours Overdue

Worse by far than pages ripped from the encyclopedia or gum stuck to the bookshelves, for many school librarians, is turning away an excited young reader.

But at schools across the Conejo Valley, that sometimes happens.

At Aspen Elementary, library doors officially close at noon weekdays, so there are no after-school stops to admire the Thanksgiving display. And at Colina Middle School, every student worth his or her grade point average soon learns not to start that book report on a Friday--when library doors are locked shut.

Libraries suffered in the Conejo Valley Unified School District’s budget crunch of the early 1990s. Daily work hours for instructional media technicians--the people who run libraries at elementary and middle schools--were cut from seven to five at bigger schools. Technicians at the nine smaller elementary schools fared worse--their hours were shaved to 3 3/4, and health and retirement benefits disappeared.

Now the school district’s fiscal health has returned. With quiet determination, the instructional media technicians--guardians of all books, magazines and VCRs--have petitioned the school board to restore their hours to five a day across the board. For all 18 elementary schools, that would cost an estimated $68,500 annually.

Although there is no formal proposal on the table, some trustees are inclined to do just that.

“It seems to me that the library should be the heart of the schools, forgive me, instead of the computer lab,” said Trustee Mildred Lynch. “And the IMTs provide the services of the library. . . . These people are overdue for some sort of restoration.”

At Aspen Elementary, where the library is open from 8:15 a.m. to noon on weekdays, technician Janet Raven and the Parent-Faculty Assn. improvised their way through the budget crisis. To keep the library open longer, the PFA chipped in money to pay Raven for working during lunchtime and recess most days.

“For my 3 3/4 hours, I’m sure I give one hour free for every hour I get paid,” Raven said. Even so, the simple fact is that the library doors aren’t open all school day--let alone before and after school.

Sometimes, students who want to use the library find a locked door, she said, or are unable to hunt for books because Raven is leading a class in the room.

“That’s a pretty sad statement when kids want to come into the library and they can’t,” she said.

For many technicians, turning a first-grader on to a storybook or finding just the right materials to complement a teacher’s lesson on amphibians is their raison d’etre.

In their daily work, technicians teach young pupils to use the library. They read stories and check books in and out. They keep track of VCRs, TVs, audiovisual equipment and even chairs. They order and distribute texts and classroom materials. They assist teachers in planning lessons. In some cases, the IMTs monitor lockers, operate the school’s photocopiers and run the lost-and-found--for a fraction of a librarian’s salary.

The worth of the technicians should not be underestimated, Trustee Lynch said.

“The IMTs are--I don’t like that name, that connotation--they are librarians,” Lynch said, adding that only high schools have certified librarians. “They know what they’re talking about. . . . They’re very valuable.”

Certified librarians are credentialed teachers with a graduate degree in library science. While most IMTs have a bachelor’s degree, it is not required for the job. They often have experience working in a library.

This year, things got more difficult for the technicians. A statewide program to shrink class size in primary grades increased the number of classes an elementary IMT sees each week. Instead of last year’s 16, some 21 classes tromp through Raven’s library each week, for instance.

Class-size reduction--with its emphasis on bolstering reading and math skills--is a godsend, the technicians agree. But it has further stretched scarce library resources.

“What has changed is that they’re not just taking care of books or textbooks,” Trustee Dolores Didio said. “They also have to take care of the technology--the job has expanded. As far as hours are concerned, I think it’s very difficult for them to do their numerous jobs in the amount of time they have.”

Anticipating a balanced $91.5-million budget, Lynch and others wonder if there isn’t some way to repay the technicians for their dedication even in an era of budget-cutting.

The best solution would be restoring hours, said technician Kathy Schwaiger, who works five hours a day at Westlake Elementary and would like to see other IMTs have the same advantage.

“You have to give up something when you cut hours,” Schwaiger explained. “Do you give up your contact with kids, or do you give up keeping track of the textbooks?”

Technicians have to make that decision even in schools with longer hours--such as Colina Middle School. Preferring to err on the side of children over paperwork, technician Lucy Frokjer reluctantly allows less important tasks to go untended.

Stacks of 200 books languish in her library office, waiting until there is a spare minute to ready them for classrooms. A clump of overhead projectors gathers dust, awaiting repair orders.

Working 25 hours a week, Frokjer doesn’t know when--or if--she’ll get around to the unfinished work. There’s just not enough time. “It’s a doggone mess,” she said with a sigh, looking around the office.

At Colina, Frokjer’s hours are set so that the library is open from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. The trade-off is a shuttered library on Fridays.

Frokjer, too, confesses to working many hours off the clock.

Whether to reinstate hours for the technicians is “a matter of budget priorities,” said Gary Mortimer, assistant superintendent of business services.

To Raven, it’s more personal than that. Restoring hours will prove that the technicians--who make between $9.90 and $12.08 an hour--are valuable school district employees.

Already this school year, teachers and full-fledged librarians received a 4.2% raise and a 2% onetime bonus. That brought the base salary to about $30,000 a year.

Paying technicians for an additional 75 minutes a day, IMTs say, would cost the districts little. But it would make a big difference in time spent with students and to finish paperwork.

Whether hours are restored, Raven confessed that technicians will continue their toils out of their love for children.

“I can’t tell you how exciting it is to discover a new book by a new author or illustrator and to turn kids on to it,” she said. “I would do that for free.”