Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean Champions "Limitless Library" Program


Dean seeks ideas on connecting families to library, (San Francisco Chronicle, 2/20/2013)

Limitless Libraries is a program that connects libraries in the city's public schools to the resources of the city library to provide students and teachers with greater access to materials and resources.

More on Nashville Mayor Karl Dean.  Though his path to re-election is clear  Karl Dean faces major issues in second term.  (The City Paper, 7/17/2011)



An admirable idea, I suppose, but the cynic in me just can't help but wonder.

With school districts nationwide cutting the number of school media specialists, many of whom are already responsible for supervising multiple libraries, ["In Lean Times, Schools Squeeze Out Librarians", The New York Times, 6/24/2011], not to mention reduced funding for materials and other resources, is this just a way to shift the burden of providing school library services to the public library?  (Perhaps some of my colleagues will ask me to add "continue to" before "shift".)

If school libraries are so important, shouldn't they receive sufficient funding from the school district in order to to achieve their mission?

Yeah, I know, rhetorical question.

And these two stories, in tandem, don't improve my outlook any.

"Schools gear for fight over TN voucher bill" (American Federation for Children, 10/24/2011)

Excerpt:  Vouchers in general also face opposition from the Tennessee School Boards Association, which represents school boards of all sizes, and Nashville Mayor Karl Dean. 

“Mayor Dean has not seen the language of the bill,” Bonna Johnson, a spokeswoman for Dean, said in a statement Friday. “However, any proposal that would remove significant amounts of public dollars from our school system would be detrimental to our school district and our schoolchildren.”

Dean's support of charter school decision-maker triggers backlash. (Nashville Tennessean, 2/17/2013)

Excerpt:   In backing controversial legislation to give the state new authority to approve charter schools in Nashville, Mayor Karl Dean strengthened his credentials as the city’s foremost charter champion.

Related reading:  American Legislative Exchange Council

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