MOUNT VERNON — School libraries may feel much of the pain as the Mount Vernon School District struggles to cut $1 million from its 2008-2009 budget.

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You have to wonder when schools are faced with cutting library staff and hours of operation, how those in charge of the school budget can justify continuing to pay for football, basketball, soccer, baseball, etc.  Those huge field lights on during practice and games, the transportation costs for away games, the equipment, custodial overtime, etc....comes from where?  If vital resources such as libraries are being shut down then there is no justification for a school district paying for sports programs.  Privately funded resources will have to take up the slack.

OR...how about our legislature gives MORE FUNDING?!  What about the lottery!?  Wasn’t that supposed to fund education?

I should clarify that I agree with you on the vital resource part...I guess the argument is made that we have public libraries....for now

Sports are paid for by the students.  At Mount Vernon HS, any student who participates in a sport has to pay a fee of $35-$40 to help cover costs.  Also, the money the public pays to come and watch events helps to pay for sports.  The high school will also be cutting 6 assistant coaches next year.  I understand that libraries seem to be a vital cut, but what is the alternative?  I graduated from MVHS last year and, in all honesty, stepped foot in the library maybe two or three times a year, and checked out 2 books in my 4 years of high school.  In middle school I was in the library maybe 3 times in 2 years.  Now you may think that this is because I was an uninvolved student who didnt care.  However, I was 27th in my class with a 3.8 GPA and was heavily involved in Leadership, Sports Medicine, and Volleyball.  Elementary school libraries are more important than those in high school.  The new high school being built in Snohomish isn’t even going to have a library.  Just some food for thought…

$40 doesn’t cover months worth of coaching, transportation and use of facilities so your contention that students pay for sports is erroneous. 

My point is, libraries are vital resources that help students access information they need to further their education.  Libraries have been a vital part of education since the Golden Age of the Greece.  Schools do need to tighten their budgets but there are other, non-vital programs—such as sports—that should be handed over to private funding before closing down our school libraries.

As a parent of a child who played sports at MVHS I can ASSURE you we paid, and we paid, and we paid....and then we paid some more.  Have you looked at the funding Lee?  It’s public record.  Have you looked at how BADLY our state government funds our schools?  How many high school students do you know that go to the school library when they have the internet?  Or a public library where they can GO on the internet?

The fact of the matter is that the cuts have to be made in the educational part of the budget, and something has to go.  Its unfortunate, but if you have an idea (other than sports because thats not included and is already suffering cuts) then you should attend the school board meeting tonight and present your idea.  Regardless of what gets cuts, students will suffer.  There are 3 library aids at the high school, is that really necessary?  By cutting librarians they arent saying that there will be days where no staff will be in libraries, there just wont be a certified librarian.  Once kids hit 3rd or 4th grade the use for librarians starts to disappear.  By the time students get to high school the main use for the library is for students to use the computers in the computer lab adjacent to the library.

As far as sports go, the use of facilities is free to high school sports and the facilities must be rented out by any private group such as AAU basketball, etc.  The cost to rent facilities is sky-high to help pay for district sports.  Student pay for so much of their sporting equiptment by doing fundraisers and coaches have to pinch their money to decide what is important to buy for the program.  Eliminating sports in school would surely cause a rise in overweight teenagers, teenage gang activity, and would show a decline in the important life skills that students learn from being a part of the team.  Also, I don’t know how much you think coaches get paid, but their stipend is nothing compared to the work they do and the impressions they make on students.

A large portion of the Washington State REQUIRED standardized test...aka the WASL...is reading. Reading isn’t something you just happen upon through osmosis. Reading is taught and a large portion of that teaching is going to the library to read and check out books.  Books and periodicals that are inventoried, cataloged and processed by librarians and their assistants.  Librarians also teach students HOW to do research which will help them through-out their lives. If you only think libraries are where they keep the computers....you missed out on a great deal of your education.

Sports give back great rewards too but they are not exclusive to publicly funded staff and facilities. Private sports teams are available....at a higher cost of course because they aren’t tax-payer subsidized as public school sports are.

There is a very good reason why our schools and students are suffering drastic cut-backs. There has been a concerted effort for the last couple of decades to dismantle the American public school system and divide our country into private enclaves of education for those who can afford it. Those families who can’t afford private school don’t matter in this scheme of things as more worker bees will keep consumer prices low. The deepening budget cuts, dumbing down of textbooks and attacking teachers as lazy elitists who only work 9 months out of the year has been a part of that effort. Closing libraries is just another nail in the public school coffin.

The real remedy is to make the commitment to fully fund our schools and give today’s students the same benefit of a good quality American education that their parents and grandparents had.

Then you need to talk to our state government (The Office of The Superintendent of Public Instruction, who screws their districts on a REGULAR basis) and you need to look at your fellow citizens who don’t want to fund bonds, or don’t want their taxes raised because they a) “raised all their children and don’t want to pay for anybody elses” or b) “don’t have children and don’t want to pay for anybody elses.”

It is not the time to debate the merits of sports participation versus library operation. Both are valuable to the educational experience. (By the way, I have not seen any recommendation forthcoming from the public about charging access fees for library use by students.) Many sporting events in Mount Vernon bring in monies by charging admission fees.
Tough economic times call for belt tightening and making best use of available funding. Rather than bemoan the fact that spending decisions are being made in ways with which you may not agree, I think we should all be more active in letting the state legislature be much more aware about the ways their unfunded mandates affect our local schools. It’s not going to be a quick fix, so give your input to our local school system in an objective way so that they can make decisions based on constructive input.

I do hope that everyone realizes that by not cutting librarians, the district will be forced to cut kindergarten class time, which to me is much more important.

Our schools are funded plenty in this state but it is like every other bureaucratic institution--too much spent on needless layers of management and administration. Why should being a school administratior be a six figure salary?  That is more than most parents of the children in the school. 
People keep passing levies and bonds and initiatives with the best of intentions--helping kids succeed in school--but a lot of that money doesn’t make it down to child level.  Taxpayers need to demand more transparency from the schools.  We don’t need to pay any more in taxes--they need to refine how the money is spent. When they cut things from the budget, they cut where it will hurt children’s school experience visibly so that the public will feel bad and vote for more school spending, thus they continue to hold us hostage.

So school sports even come before Kindergarten class time?  Amazing.

You can always tell a writer who hasn’t been involved in his local schools for a number of years....if not decades.  All Washington state schools have to function under Initiative 601.

Initiative 601 was passed by the voters of Washington in 1993 and states, “No fee may increase in any fiscal year by a percentage in excess of the fiscal growth factor for that fiscal year without prior legislative approval.”