Superintendent's Plan to Make Librarians Extinct

Following the national fad for replacing teacher decision-making with high-tech finery, the new superintendent of the Burlington Vermont schools has announced a redesign of the city's one high school. The popular high school principal of 17 years service has been forced out--to an elementary school. Word is that she protested the high tech plan of replacing the school librarian with technological foo-foo.

Can you imagine a school of  1,150 students with no librarian?

John Dewey graduated from Burlington High School in 1874. His grave is the only one on the University of Vermont campus. I suspect today's education reform news  causes this headstone to rock and roll.

So I wrote this letter. The headline is not mine. I prefer the headline above.

Librarians or ‘cyber-tech’

I am stunned to read the accounts of changes at Burlington High School. Superintendent Yaw Obeng talks of plans “for more high-tech, cyber- tech options,” but longtime principal Amy Mellencamp, who has earned respect from the community, reveals plans for eliminating a full-time librarian. People who care about Burlington students should ask: Who do you want making day-to-day decisions about your children’s needs – the school librarian or the superintendent’s cybertech option used to deliver dubious content?

SUSAN OHANIAN

Charlotte


PS: I just found my report card from Grade 1. Grades of  equal weight were given in:
Social Studies
Reading
Arithmetic
Language Arts
Music and Art (which included enjoyment of music and rhythm and participation in singing)

I also found the one memento I saved from all of elementary school. Contained in a sealed envelope with this label : My first saxophone reed.

I admit to being fascinated by this decision a nine-year-old made about Important Things. I guess this is what happens when a kid doesn't have all those cyber-tech options filling her days.