My Public Comment on Librarian Reassignment

Below is the public comment I wrote for Monday’s meeting (4/20/2026), which I emailed to the school board. The RoundTable has a great piece on the librarian situation as well.

Hello Board -

I commented last night, but here are my more complete thoughts on the librarian reassignment. I strongly understand the financial situation, but this is a horrible idea for many reasons .. and not just because I'm a fan of libraries.

1. This reassignment violates your own Board policy and potentially state regulations: 6:230 and 23 Ill.Admin.Code §1.420(o). In particular, the section requiring equitable access among all grade levels. For this reason, I believe you do need to vote on this reassignment and to suspend this particular Board policy (6:230).

2. Middle School ELA/literacy is the only bright spot in the achievement gap for D65 - 2/3 middle schools had double digit growth in black student achievement on 2025 IAR. Nowhere else in the District is this true. Chute's librarian, Ms. Martin, who spoke last night, I suspect, had a big role in this. You should be bringing those educators to the Board and figuring out what they're doing well instead of laying them off.

   

3. An investment in 1:1 technology requires an investment in tech literacy - your librarians are the people who do that work. The District Administration has not been competent on that front, they gave kids basically unlimited YouTube from 2008-2025! Dumping the librarians is throwing the kids to the wolves here.

If you learned about policy 6:230 and 1.420(o) from me and the public commenters last night, that is a problem. Competency of state laws and board policies should derive from your Superintendent, lawyers, and staff -- not random members of the public. You're not the only level of government dealing with errors-of-omission but I will say - it's worse in District 65 than any level of government I've ever seen.

Lastly, no matter what the IASB tells you in your training, there is nothing to stop you from passing a resolution reaffirming the role of librarians in our school and directing the administrators to not terminate their roles. The idea that this somehow violates the independence of your Superintendent is nonsensical - governments do this all the time - ask the Evanston City Manager how many resolutions he gets every month from Council. 

As we face a national literacy crisis where a generation of students may not be fully literate -- do you really want to walk away from your Board tenure saying you had a hand in that? This is an easy win that costs the District almost nothing and protects a lot of downside risk on the technology, equity, and legal side.