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- [00:13]
A
Well, Hi, friends. Welcome to episode 352 of School Librarians United. I'm your host, Amy Herman. This podcast is dedicated to the issues and challenges school librarians face every day. As a school librarian in my 19th year, I knew I wanted a podcast which addressed the nuts and bolts of running a successful library program. I don't claim to have the answers, but I hope that this is a platform to share resources and exchange ideas. Now is a perfect time to mention that all the ideas and opinions expressed in this podcast by myself, my interview guests and listeners who reach out to the podcast are our own and do not reflect those of our school districts. When incorporating research, I always make sure to cite my sources. So whether you are a novice or a veteran school librarian, this podcast has something for you. I welcome you and all listeners to reach out with your feedback and episode suggestions. You can reach me on Facebook on X, formerly known as Twitter. My handle is msunited. On threads and Instagram. You can find me at School Librarians United and on BlueSky SLU podcast or the email address schoollibrariansunitedmail.com if you include your mailing address, I'll be sure to send you a podcast sticker. And now for today's episode, Library Librarians Equal Literacy, and my conversation with Jenny Fox, Rachel Cohen, and Marissa Migdal. All right, friends, I'm so excited. We've got a special treat today. We've got an amazing team of advocates who have been working together very hard to create more opportunities for librarians, certified librarians, to be working in the public schools of New York City. I am so thrilled that they are here today, the Librarians Equal Literacy Team. So let's go ahead and get started.
- [02:07]
B
Welcome.
- [02:08]
A
Introduce yourselves and give us a little, little idea of what do you do when you're not a parent advocate.
- [02:14]
C
Hi, Amy. Thanks for having us. My name is Jenny Fox. I am a mom of two kids in the New York City school system. I have a high schooler. He does have a librarian at his school, and I have a middle schooler who does not have a librarian at his school, even though his school also serves a high school. When I'm not advocating for librarians in our schools, I am also a children's book writer. I have four picture books out, and I was a children's book editor for a long time, too.
- [02:41]
B
Wow.
- [02:42]
A
All right, Fanta. Well, and you know what? But the amazing thing is you come at this with a really unique perspective of the importance of books and, you know, having a librarian in those spaces is going to make an important difference in the education of everyone's children. Thank you so much. All right, let's go ahead and introduce our next parent advocate.
- [03:04]
B
Hi, my name is Rachel Cohen. I'm the mom of a second grader in the public schools. I'm also the daughter, granddaughter, and niece of school librarians and a longtime lover of school libraries. And I've worked for many years as a campaigner and communication strategist with labor unions and a lot of other progressive groups fighting to make our communities more equitable.
- [03:35]
A
Wow. All right, well, and as somebody who has belonged to a teachers Union for almost 30 years, thank you very much. I'm very grateful, and I'm sorry that not everyone has that opportunity necessarily afforded to them, but I am surely a fan of my union. Absolutely. And last but not least, Marissa, welcome to the conversation.
- [03:57]
D
Thank you. My name is Marissa. I have two kids in the public school system. In elementary school, I'm in my last semester of earning my master's in library science at Queens College, and I also started working two days a week at the school library in my kids school, which is paid for by a grant, not by the doe. So it's kind of a band aid situation there.
- [04:22]
A
And I will say I've had faculty from Queens College on the show, and I don't know if they're currently teaching right now, but I'll tell you what, I always love when our school librarians who are faculty and are instructing the next generation of graduating school librarians, I love when they come on the show because you've got people who are librarians by day and instructors by night. And it is absolutely inspiring. Never gonna be my. That's not my calling, but congratulations in advance, Marissa. I am so excited for the New York school librarians. You're going to be plus one very shortly, and congratulations in advance. That's fantastic. So those of you tuning in know this podcast has for many years reserved this space to showcase the important work that school librarians do every day. However, we also leave open the rare invitation for amazing community members, in this case, families, parents like yourself, to share and celebrate what you've done to promote student learning in your respective schools and communities. So I'm so grateful you joined us here today. The organization Friends is Librarians Equal Literacy. I want to know more about this group because I know that there are other examples of parent advocacy groups around the country, and in this case specifically, lobbying hard to bring more certified school librarians into. In this case, the New York City School District could You all give us an appreciation, an idea of the inception of this organization and how it has evolved over the years.
- [06:08]
C
Sure. We started back in fall of 2021. So taking it back a little ways, this is, you know, a long term fight that we're in. And we're also trying to change things in the largest school district in America. So we're talking about over 900,000 children, over 1600 schools. So this is a big job. Our school fall of 2021 lost a beloved librarian who was only part time. And she was. Her job was paid for by the pta. So again, there's a lot of these band aid fixed situations where PPAs are paying or people can only be part time, people don't have benefits, people can't join the union. There's a lot of problems with these, these Band aid solutions. So once we lost our librarian, we started looking outward because we figured it wasn't just our problem. So we started first looking at our district, which is District 15 in Brooklyn, which is a huge district. And we discovered that over half of the schools did not have certified librarians in them and thus did not have functioning library programs. And these included middle schools and high schools which are mandated to have them. So one of our first big undertakings was we had our students at our elementary school send over 400 postcards to the DOE and elected officials. And we wanted to like, center the children in this fight. And it was also just very cute. And the postcards said that, you know, I don't have a librarian at my school. I really wish I did. And then it, the kids could fill in what they like to read about. So it just kind of personalized the fight for some of what we were trying to do to reach out to our elected officials. So that was January of 22. In March of that same year, we had a rally in our schoolyard. We had pretty much the whole school came out. And we also had invited some of those elected officials who we sent postcards to to come to our rally. And many of them showed up and some of them even spoke. One of our city council members and earliest champions, Lincoln Ressler, spoke by the following fall, like October of 2022, we had five core city council members who on our behalf sent a letter to the DOE requesting data on school librarian loss. How many librarians were left in our school system? Which schools had librarians? Which ones did not the doe. It was crickets. No response. Because we were as parents were like, oh, great, we've got these elected officials now. We're going to get the information. No response by that January. So that was now January 2023. Some of those same elected officials, Lincoln Ressler and Rita Joseph, got us a meeting with the doe, where we presented a petition of a thousand signatures from parents calling for librarians in our schools. We also had seven classes of kindergartners and first graders come and protest on the steps of the doe, which was not a particularly popular move with the doe. I just sort of organized it anyway. So in that meeting it was myself and our elected officials, our two city council members. Also in that meeting, the DOE had invited her was Emily Drabinski, who was then the president elect of the American Library Association. She's also a local New York City Brooklyn parent. So we were very happy to connect with her. It was sort of like we connected. After the meeting, the doe, however, you know, they said, oh yeah, we think we, we all love librarians, we all want librarians. But there was still no data, no real information, and no real plan to fix anything. That may. A story came out that we pitched to Chalkbeat and they started looking into it. And this is the first time we got any sort of like concrete numbers on the situation. And in the chalk beat story, they analyzed school budgets and came to the conclusion that out of 1600 plus schools in the New York City school system, we had approximately 260 school librarians in school budgets. It was not entirely surprising to us that we also have been, had been looking for the information out of the doe. You know, one of our first steps in all of this is saying that we can't fix a problem unless we admit there's a problem and the scope and size of the problem. So until we know like approximately how many librarians are actually in our school system, we can't say as parents, oh, we barely have any. So this is like the first steps in saying, you know, it's a very small number. The DOE was still not, you know, admitting anything. So the following fall, which brings us to November of 2024, Lincoln Ressler and Rita Joseph, who are two of our city council members, and Rita was the chair of the education committee for the New York City Council. They put forth a bill that would force the DOE to report data on existing school librarians and libraries. How many librarians were left? Which schools had them? Which kids had access to the library? Because there's also situations where we'll. In New York City especially, there are schools that share a space and maybe not all the kids have access or only certain grades are Getting access or if it's a part time librarian. Not all the kids can be covered by one part time person. Then by that spring, we had a hearing for the bill in April. It was great. We had a lot of students come testify. We had people from the New York Public Library System come testify. It was really a lot of people came together who had interest in this. And then in May, the bill passed unanimously in City Hall. And then this past December of 2025, the DOE had to deliver their first report about how many librarians and library access in the schools. The librarian piece was very similar to what Chalkbeat had reported. It was around 270. Less than 300 librarians in 1600 plus schools. The DOE, you know, that was them admitting it officially for the first time. And so when you crunch the numbers, only 15% of New York City schools have a librarian on staff that included part time.
- [12:48]
A
Forgive me, but you know, I appreciate you're talking about the country's largest school district, but that's no excuse. It doesn't mean this is less important. It means that it's just harder to track. So, yes, I mean, I'd love to hear, you know. Now, Jenny, how did you. I want to know how the three of you came together to form the Librarians Equal Literacy Coalition. Because I'm guessing you weren't neighbors.
- [13:20]
C
Yeah, so actually all of our children went to the same elementary school. And I had started working on this a little bit earlier and ironically I met both Rachel and Marissa separately, but in the school library, which at. At both times, I think we didn't even have a library. And it wasn't even functioning as a school library. It was just like a meeting space. I met Rachel. I did a talk about book bans. And she was at the talk and I was using the premise of book bans to talk, you know, a, about what's happening with that. But also in my mind, if we aren't even offering children a school library, that is a different form of banning books, limiting books, limiting access, killing representation. So if there's no library at all, I think that's also not okay. So Rachel was at that talk and then Marissa. We met at a talk about literacy in our kids school and she came up to me afterwards because I asked a pointed question about whether or not we had any phonics books in our school.
- [14:36]
B
Right. Jenny mentioned how she like, she. It took her 15 minutes of her presentation for me to be like, okay, this is a big problem. We need to. I need to join the fight to get These librarians back. And I will say I went to the talk. So as Jenny said, it was for. It was during Banned Books Week. It was like, right at the beginning of the year, my daughter started kindergarten, and I saw it in the, like, PTA newsletter, and I was really excited to go because I was like, oh, my God, it's in the library. I'll get to meet the librarian. And, you know, thanks to Jenny, you found out, in fact, while there is a library in the school, you know, at the time, there was no librarian there. And I just was, like, furious. And then, you know, to hear Jenny saying, well, actually, this is not just a problem at our school. It is a problem everywhere. I was like, you know, immediately afterwards, I went right up to her and was like, can I email you? Can we talk about this? Can I help? And so I think that we have seen that with a lot of other parents that we talk to, they don't realize that there's no librarian at the school until the campaign starts. Another thing I just wanted to bring up in terms of, like, the history and stuff is, as Jenny said, it's like, the number of schools. I think, actually the number of school. It's like between 14 to 16% of New York City public schools and that now have a librarian, according to the information released by the doe. But just to put it in a little bit of historical context, so 20 years ago, we had the same number of New York city public schools, 1600, that we have today. I mean, roughly. Right. We're talking estimates here. And we had an. About 90% of those schools had a school librarian 20 years ago, 25 years ago. And so we have lost them over the last 20 years. And. And it's. You know, it's. Most of the administrations in those years have tried to, like, sweep it under the rug, have. Have ignored it. And because it's been going down steadily. So like, 2014, 2015, parents and librarians were raising the alarm about this. And, you know, a number of administrations have done nothing. So it's really, you know, a problem. It's been a problem for decades. And then the other thing I just wanted to mention, Jenny touched on this, is that the New York State law mandates functioning libraries in every single public school and says there should be a librarian in every secondary school, middle school, and high school. So that's. That's New York State law for every city and town in the state. Unfortunately, it is an unfunded mandate. So there's no. There's no line in the budget. Right. Albany sets the budget for New York City schools, and there's no line in the budget for librarians. There actually is money earmarked for books and some other library supplies, but for the librarian themselves, nothing. And this is really terrible because as I'm sure all of your listeners know, it is not the room full of books that provides all of the amazing benefits to our kids. It is the you know, qualified, certified, so many amazing, wonderful librarians who are providing all of those benefits. And, you know, and our kids miss out when we don't have that.
- [18:11]
C
Yeah, I was just going to say we call it a quiet problem because before we started talking about this especially and bringing it even to our elected officials, people just didn't really know what was going on. So I think part of what we had to do, at least early on, was just call out the problem, identify that our schools don't necessarily have librarians anymore, that sort of thing. Marissa, did you want to talk about some of the parent expectations about librarians?
- [18:43]
D
Yeah, I think, like Rachel touched on that, most parents are first of all always surprised to learn that their school doesn't have a library or librarian because it's just assumed that the education of their child will include that. So, like, off the bat, I think people go in thinking there will be a library and librarian. And then I think the thing that parents are always surprised about that kind of always surprises me. And even today I'm part time at the elementary school and they're always surprised that I'm teaching lessons and they thought that I would just curate the collection and check out books. But I mean, as your audience knows, it's so much more than that. And parents are just willing to fight for the bare minimum. So it's like crazy that they're missing out on media literacy, collaboration, development of inquiry and curiosity, research, guiding learners to develop skills needed to support classroom learning, like, so much more. And I think what people are often told is that the classroom libraries are robust. And, you know, that's the principal's kind of answer to why we don't have a library. Well, the classroom libraries are amazing and sufficient, and people don't realize how much that limits children. And I think we all know that a library, a school library, is a safe place of choice and judgment, free. And sometimes these classroom libraries are separated by levels, which is even more detrimental to reading motivation and really discouraging for readers out there. And I think parents, like, there's all these panic articles like, my kids don't read for pleasure anymore. And then we like, limit Access to the beacon of reading choice, which is school libraries. And just like a fun thing that I did with my 5th graders is they wrote reviews of their books. And nothing makes kids read books more than peer reviews. Like, I could tell you to read a book all day long, but if your classmate says, this book is fire and it's written underneath the book, kids are going to select that book. And kids need that space where they can be their own curator of what they read and not a classroom library.
- [21:19]
B
I just wanted to add on one thing, adding on to what Marissa was talking about in terms of, like, literacy, and give a little context for where our name comes from. So, you know, we started this campaign under the Adams administration. He made a very big deal about how his, like, education focus was going to be literacy and that, you know, all kids, you know, would be, would be supported in learning to read. And there was this NYC Reads program that he started, and we were looking through it and there's no mention of librarians anywhere in. And you know, when we were thinking about names like I will give. I will tip my hat to Jenny, because she was like, one day she was like, what about librarians equal Literacy? And we were like, oh, yeah, yeah. Because, you know, librarians equal so much more than that. They bring so much more than that. But we felt for our, like, citywide campaign that it just was ridiculous that, you know, the supposedly, like the crown jewel of the education system was going to be this focus on literacy. And, and we're not mentioning that, you know, 50 plus years of research shows how important school librarians are to supporting literacy and academic success generally in schools. And that cuts across learners of racial and economic disparities. And like, nobody's, nobody's talking about this. So we were like, we need to talk about this. We need to spread the word to, to parents.
- [22:56]
C
I just wanted to add, I, I like to think about the library as like a counterpoint to the classroom. And I think that's something that not all parents understand and sometimes we have to educate about as well. And I think especially with problems that we're coming up with how literacy has been taught in America for the last 30 ish years and how we're just starting to fix that. There was a lot of children that did not feel good in the classroom surrounding their literacy and their reading skills, and they're being told that they were a d bin and not an mbin and all of that. So the fact that they could go into a library. Our former librarian at school said she had a Kid come in. And he said, where's the, you know, level F books? I'm a level F. And she's like, not in the library. In the library, you can get whatever you want.
- [23:44]
A
Yeah. I've had a student ask me for an lmn. An LMN book. I'm like, what's an LMN book? And I said, what's an lmn? They're like, you know, lmn. I was like, oh, yeah, no, we don't do that here. But I gotta tell you right now, there are a lot of people tuning in right now who are school librarians, who were classroom teachers. And when you tell those teachers that their collection of books in their room is what is going to build those student readers, I'm going to tell you right now, most of those classroom collections have been a combination of garage sale. When the libraries have their used book sale, teachers have had their Scholastic book fairs, and they've been able to buy some books with the profits from their classroom. But for that to be what ushers our students from one reading, you know, their reading journey into, you know, growing them into readers, that is such a limited way, that kind of burden on our teachers, because so many of them are digging into their pockets. Relying on teachers to create that classroom collection to support all of their student reading needs is a burden. It's also unrealistic. And, oh, by the way, when it comes to your child's education, hinging on Donors choose and Amazon wish lists, this is not a strategy that is going to always be pan out. I've had administrators prohibit me from doing that kind of fundraisers. Absolutely. I've gone to them and said, hey, I was hoping to do a donors choose an Amazon wish list. And they said, you absolutely cannot. It looks bad. Okay, well, then we need a budget. But the optics look bad. Because the optics look bad. If that is your solution to building a classroom literacy program, is having fundraisers and hoping that you have teachers who have either limitless amount of expendable income that they can just create those classroom collections, that's unreasonable. It's a burden, and it's not a solution at all.
- [26:02]
C
Yes, Jenny, I would just want to add, we're not disparaging anything that the teachers are doing in the classroom. It's just, as you're saying, unreasonable to expect teachers to also be curating full library collections. And that's a skill that librarians, you know, as you guys know, are specifically trained in. The teachers do not have time to be looking at, you know, school Library Journal and Kirkus and all the book reviews of the new things coming out and the different genres and the different categories of who's being served by all these books. And so that is a very special skill that we need our librarians for. And that's why we need both of those spaces, the classroom reading and the library reading.
- [26:44]
A
The requirement that the New York State mandate is hollow, it's empty, it's worth nothing if it isn't accompanied by the kind of funding that would make that mandate possible. And for a state legislature or governor to wield that kind of state funding to be able to support that kind of mandate at all. Let me just, you know, for the benefit of the audience tuning in, the New York Public School District is the largest public school district in the United States, by far. The next one's not even close, with just over 900,000 students. And, you know, just trying to get a grasp of that and then to realize that. And across the entire district you might have 260 school librarians. I don't understand why some New York public schools have school librarians and others do not. Is it done through the prerogative of the administration? I mean, it's one district, but schools have such different expectations as to how the library is going to be staffed in the first place.
- [27:59]
C
What we are often told from the DOE is that it is a principal's discretion how they use their budget. So if your principal doesn't want to pay for a librarian, you're not going to have a librarian. While that might be strictly speaking true, we feel that they are passing the buck. The principals are facing unfathomable budget constraints and being asked to fill 100 cups with one pitcher of water. This librarian loss at this level, if, you know, 85%, roughly of our schools do not have a librarian in them. That is a system wide problem and we feel like it needs to be addressed and fixed systemically. We also, you know, just getting into the fairness of this, you know, who gets one, who doesn't. It's definitely also an equity issue. As the librarian community knows too well, school librarian loss is an issue that disproportionately harms our most vulnerable student populations the most. Our LGBTQ students, our English language learners, our students living in poverty. The numbers of the data in what we found with how many librarians and where they are in New York City schools is also pointing to serious inequities. More than 80% of the schools with poverty rates higher than 75% did not have a librarian on Staff which was roughly 6 percentage points higher than schools with lower poverty rates. And that was from the Chalk Beat article. And just from the data that we recently received from the DOE, we know that approximately 11% only of schools that have over 85% of their students living below the poverty line had librarians on staff. So even within this small, terrible number, it gets smaller and more terrible for the families who are living in poverty and the students that are being served by those schools.
- [30:08]
D
And just to add on that, there's also the issue of schools PTAs fixing their problems individually and hiring librarians through the PTA or having some sort of. We have like a robust book committee at our school that, that handles readathons and has brings some like reading joy to the schools. But that is an individual band aid that is only happening in the most funded PTA schools. Just highlighting the inequity of it all.
- [30:50]
A
But Marissa, I'm so curious because you know, we were talking about this, but it sounds like individual schools have found workarounds and band aids to not having a school librarian. Could you maybe explain what are some things that schools have done in the absence of having a certified school librarian on site?
- [31:10]
D
I think that highlights the inequity that Jenny was talking about, that some schools have a robust PTA budget that can put in band aids, like part time librarians paid by the pta, parent volunteers who run the library or book committees who plan author visits and readathons that bring reading community and joy to the school. In essence making it completely inequitable.
- [31:39]
A
And I'll be honest. Hey, I'm really, I love a good parent volunteer, but a parent volunteer would unfortunately give the appearance that we do not need to bring in a school librarian. You're like, oh no, there is somebody in the library. And it's like, no, that's not the same thing. That's not the same thing as you bring in a parent volunteer because and all of a sudden you're like, oh, we can just pat ourselves in the back. We don't need a school librarian. But Marissa, I want to know at what point point in this journey as a parent, you know, with your, your children going to school without a school librarian. At what point did you realize what you wanted to do was go and become a school librarian?
- [32:24]
D
It was kind of an interesting journey. I, I worked in photography for 14 years. I got laid off in the pandemic. I was on kindergarten zoom and started chatting with the beloved librarian who left our school. And I was like, what's what's this about? Should I do it? And she was like, yes. And then I kind of put that thought to the side for a couple years and then met Jenny in the library and said, you know what? I want to be in here being a parent volunteer. And I don't want parent volunteers running the library. So I'm going to become certified and fix it one class at a time. It's definitely a very interesting journey. Being motivated by the advocacy of it all.
- [33:15]
A
No. And I mean, being part of the solution has got to feel validating and necessary. The fact that that's the solution is frustrating too, because it makes all the sense in the world that these students deserve to have certified school librarians in place to really just do all the amazing work that we do. So, you know, I'd like to know a couple things. First of all, your website is fantastic. Friends. I encourage anytime we can look at the resources that have been put together to lift one district's efforts to put school librarians in place, you know, these are great ways to learn from one another. If you happen to be in a situation where there are a lacking of certified school librarians in your district, I'd love to learn more about some of the aspects of your website that you put together. Cause it's a terrific resource. I love learning from websites. Website design is not something that I have any sort of formal training in, but I've had to oversee websites before just as a librarian. But you've included in your website downloadable signs, postcards, as well as information about your organization. But I love the postcards because you came up with the most elegant of solutions. You're in New York. There are a lot of talented, incredibly talented people living and working in New York. Can you give us an appreciation of what you will find when you visit the postcard page of your advocacy website? Because it is so clever.
- [34:59]
C
Sure. So we have done now two different kid postcard campaigns. That first one I mentioned when we first got started and then we recent we did one right before the bill was passed to kind of push that over the finish line. And as I mentioned, I'm a children's book writer and I'm part of an agency. And a lot of the people at the agency are children's book illustrators. And my agents, painted words shout out to Painted words were kind enough to. They often give illustrators like a prompt just to do as like little exercises and mailing pieces and things. And they let me take over the illustrator prompt one month. The illustrators were aware that their art would then be used in this way. But the prompt was about, you know, book bands and supporting school libraries. And so we had real children's book illustrators create those art pieces, which are amazing. And then on the back, it's where the kids can fill in. So you can send them to your DOE or your elected officials or whoever you think you want to target. It's very easy. You can just pull down the PDFs, upload them to, like, a batch printing site, like Got Print or one of those, print them in bulk and do a postcard mailing at your school. I think we just want to encourage, you know, parents especially to get involved in any way they can. We want to make it easy for people. We have, you know, sort of. We've worked out some of the kinks in this. So it's like, please use what we've done. There's signs you can download if you have a rally, or they make just, like, nice library posters. So we want to make it easy and we want to encourage parents. It's like, we were not experts in this. When we got started, I would just. It was like throwing spaghetti at the wall. We would just try something, see what happened, try something else, see what happens. So these are things you can do fairly easily to try something, to get involved, to get the kids involved, which is super important, too. I mean, these kids get fired up. We have, you know, we had Marissa's daughter, who is how old?
- [37:00]
D
She's eight now.
- [37:01]
C
She came and testified at a hearing. Yeah, she was seven. She testified at a hearing at city Hall. We had high school students come testify at city Hall. It's great. The kids, you know, they want to be involved and they should be involved.
- [37:17]
A
Well, and Jenny, I love that when you have those professional connections in the publishing community that you are able to tap professionals who would be able to lend their gifts to promote something as vitally important as having certified school librarians in schools. I think everyone sees the value, but getting illustrators of children's books to be part of that solution is really genius. I love it.
- [37:51]
C
Thank you. Thank you. I think all. I mean, most children's book people are library people. They love librarians, they love school librarians. They go visit schools. It's often arranged by school librarians. So we all have, you know, a vested interest in supporting each other and just like a real love there.
- [38:09]
A
So I'm curious, you know, listeners tuning in would be really interested to learn what the past three years has revealed to you about advocacy work and working to get your schools staffed with school librarians who are certified. And, Rachel, I'm hoping you'll kick off this conversation.
- [38:28]
B
Sure, sure. So, yeah. So we realized, you know, very quickly, Right. The problem is not just at our school, it's systemic. A systemic problem, like, needs a systemic solution also. It's like, school librarians were important to us for our kids, but we didn't want to just, you know, fix our own little problem. Like, to what Marissa was saying about, oh, some schools, you know, the richer and whiter the school is, more likely the PTA is going to try and figure out some neat little solution just for their kids. And that's not, as everyone knows, not just for libraries, but for everything. And this was not appealing to us. Like, we were like, this is not. This is not like, let's just get some money here and fix our little problem. Because this problem is. Is for. For everyone. For the. Yeah. Almost a million public school students in New York City. So we really thought hard about organizing a broad grassroots campaign and engaging with parents, students, school librarians, community support, and really, you know, building something that would create the kind of public and political pressure that we needed to, like, really make a difference here. You know, we had, from the very beginning great support from some of our local electeds, but we really focused on building community, working with other groups. We did a number of things, including, like, petitions and actions where we engaged thousands of parents and students and librarians in every borough from kindergarten through 12th grade in schools that had librarians and didn't. And, you know, people did different things from signing a petition to sending a postcard, to calling their members, their member of the city Council, to coming out to our actions. You know, we had over 200 parents and students and librarians at our rally when we had the hearing for this bill, the Librarians Count bill, which is our bill to get the information. And I think in a similar amount, when the bill was passed, which was a really exciting day, we have connected with a lot of other amazing groups that are fighting for, you know, different aspects of the things that our kids need for a quality, equitable, you know, safe and caring public school system. And that, you know, ranges from groups fighting against book bans like the New York Civil Liberties Union, to groups fighting for trans students. You know, he give a shout out to transformative schools and aunties for liberation. In New York City, there's a great group called Urban Librarians Unite, which actually is focused around public libraries. But, you know, they've been very supportive to us, and we have worked with them. Of course, the UFT and so many. That's the United Federation of Teachers, which is the New York City public school union, who, you know, we've worked with and, like, have some really great librarian activists. There's a group in New York State called the alliance for Quality Education. They've been supportive and we've tried to support them. And, you know, we started at one school, but we really have built this amazing grassroots group of parents and really tried to work in coalition with other groups, you know, and also, you know, in the moment that we're in, fighting for school librarians and school libraries is political. And, you know, we don't shy away from that in our work. And it's really important to us to say, yes, we want school librarians, but we care about kids and families and librarians and teachers. And, you know, that we will speak out on other issues as well.
- [42:29]
C
I just wanted to highlight two other things. Rachel said. I think it's, like, really moving, especially. And I was at the hearing, we had so many librarians and students from schools that do have librarians come and support the children who don't have librarians, and also the public librarians who came and testified and supported. So these are people, they could be like, this is not my problem, but they're not. And then I also just speaking to the political climate in New York City, I think one of the things that we have to kind of grapple with is the fact that there's a lot of people in New York City who think we're this bastion and beacon of intellectual freedom. We're in our bubble. We're not, you know, we're progressive. We. But we have people putting forth book bans here. We have all of that is happening here. And also, before the Project 2025 agenda even began attacking school libraries nationwide, here in New York City, we had already self destroyed 85% of our school libraries. So I think as New Yorkers, we have to, you know, to me it's like, shameful and hypocritical. And I just think we have to take, like, a long, hard look at what we think we are and how we're really, like, living our values. On this particular issue, the perception is
- [43:55]
A
that, you know, I'm sure there are a lot of people who are making assumptions about New York City, and it would be very easy to just let that go. But when you reveal that behind it all, you're looking at in a massive school district, you're looking at something which has oftentimes gone without anyone saying anything. Out loud. And the fact that parent volunteers have been able to come in and do sort of a pull something together in terms of providing. But, but you do mention that there is a socioeconomic divide because you do have the wealthier communities which have the possibility of a stay at home parent or somebody who can provide a presence in the library space versus communities which are perhaps less affluent and perhaps a population which cannot afford to come and just volunteer their time in their children's school. And they. And there is an equity issue. Absolutely. I want to talk a little bit about politics because New York has recently had, just recently, in January, inaugurated in the subway system. The world was watching for a couple reasons. The new mayor, Zoran Mamdani, is a Democrat socialist. You sort of have the spotlight on New York right now because everyone is looking to see what kinds of changes are going to be enacted, what kinds of things are going to be met with pushback. So it's really, I think there are people who are hopeful that if you bring somebody in who's a Democrat socialist, that there's hope. And also, by the way, somebody who is a product of the New York City public school system and graduated from one of the high schools in the New York public school system. And I say New York City, in the New York City public school system. So I'm wondering if there's hope that this new mayor might see a reason to amplify this disparity and address it and make it a priority.
- [46:14]
C
Yes. So we do have a new mayor. A lot of us are feeling excited and hopeful by our new mayor, Mayor Mamdani. We were happy to hear recently, during the snowstorm, he suggested people download the heated rivalry books from the public library. So we're hoping he's signaling that he is a reader and library supporter, which would be great news. We also, he's appointed a new school's chancellor, Kamar Samuels, who has spoken out about the fact that he does want to continue amplifying the literacy work that was begun with NYC Reeds. We hope that their focus on equity and their willingness thus far to tackle big systemic problems would make this fight also something that they are open to. So, yeah, I think like many people in York right now, we're cautiously optimistic and, you know, we would love to work with them.
- [47:11]
A
I think so many people are watching and, you know, there is obviously going to be somebody who's watching to see this fail spectacularly. But I think so many people, I think, are optimistic when you have a graduate from the New York City public school system to hopefully be able to get the attention of the new mayor and start to make some substantial changes systematically. Let's review for listeners who do not yet know about your website. Your website provides a terrific template for any group working to increase the number of school librarians in their local schools. Would you walk us through sort of how you structured your website? Because we started to talk about aspects of it, but make sure, let's appreciate what were the priorities when you did design your website?
- [48:04]
C
I think we wanted to make our campaign message very clear. What we're trying to do, that we are a campaign to get certified librarians and libraries back in NYC schools. I think, you know, we've had the opportunity to be in a lot of news stories through Chalkbeat and some other outlets. And in October, we had a op ed in the Daily News, which is one of the two large papers in New York City. And so we always want to keep our news, our news stories up to date, too, so people can go there and see what we're doing. And then as we talked about, we have the signs and postcards just trying to make things, like, very easy for other people to get involved and find ways to just try something out in their own communities.
- [48:49]
A
It is barely February. Today is February 1st. And, you know, so we've got a whole lot of 2026 ahead of us. Could you give us an idea? What are some of the things that your organization, Librarians Equal Literacy hope to do in the coming months and then in 2026?
- [49:08]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we are very excited and feeling optimistic about Saran' mayorship and his administration and, you know, hopeful about what, what that could mean for our, for our campaign and for our kids. And, you know, I will say he has committed to progressive demand around the public libraries, which is allocating half of 1% of the new York City budget to funding New York City public libraries. And we take that as a very positive sign of his understanding about public libraries and hope that that kind of energy is like going to bring that kind of energy to our school libraries as well. You know, we have big goals. You know, maybe it's. It's probably going to take more than a year because our overall goal is bringing back New York City public school librarians, a library and a librarian in every single public school. I mean, we're going to work really hard. We would love to say come back in December and tell you we've done it, but realize it's, it's a lot of work. You know, we are really hopeful that we can have dialogue and buy in from the mayor and the chancellor of, like, their understanding and acknowledgement. Yes, we have lost so many of these school librarians, and we need to make real concrete plans to restore them. We also, as Jenny mentioned, you know, we passed this bill last year. We got a preliminary count on librarians and libraries in the public schools in December. It was, you know, it did not seem to us that it was done very thoroughly or with much, you know, enthusiasm and consistency. And I don't want to spend too much time talking about that. But like, for instance, the library access that was supposed to be shared in the data, we were supposed to say in every school how many hours of library access students have. And instead, what the previous administration released was a list of schools that it claimed had a physical library space and the opening hours of those schools. And that was, you know, their contention of, like, you know, I Forget it was 1300. There's something like 1300 schools that had library access for kids. And, you know, we're scratching our heads because like, another, you know, another sheet in the Excel sheet says there's like 260 total librarians in the whole public school system, and yet somehow magically, they are running 1300 libraries like the math is not mapping. We are really hopeful that this administration is going to make a real effort for an accurate and full accounting as it's, you know, described under the new, under New York City law. And, you know, we would really like from them, you know, real public acknowledgment of the importance of librarians in supporting literacy and academic success for all of our students and that, like, we need a concrete plan to bring them back. And, you know, thinking about what are the ways that, you know, the New York City Department of Education can incentivize and potentially fund school librarians and, you know, maybe, you know, strengthen and make more robust the teacher to librarian program that they talk about all the time. You know, they say this is a pipeline problem and that, that, that the program of training public school teachers, you know, retraining them to be certified librarians, they, they in the last administration would always say that's the solution, but like, it wasn't the solution because we had lost so many librarians and it didn't, you know, bring them all back, you know, so we would like to really see real plans that, that address this in a real way, you know, and we'd love to work with our New York City advocates and then statewide, because we imagine this is not a problem that is just happening in New York City to think about what are things that we can do with allies from across the. The state, at the state level, to increase the funding from Albany for school librarians here in New York City and across the state.
- [53:41]
A
Well, and not to like, you know, you know, put too much on our new mayor of the city of New York, but somebody needs to point out to him that he went to specialized schools. Forgive me, I don't know much about the public schools in New York, but the research I found indicated that he went to one of the eight specialized high schools, which means he probably went to a pretty fantastic middle school. And his elementary school experience was probably above par. And I wonder if the expectation is because his schools had school librarians. I wonder if he just naturally assumes the other schools in the New York City public school system also have school librarians, which, because his experience, while public, was not typical.
- [54:35]
C
I can speak to the high schools a little bit. I have a high school student. I went through the whole applying to high school in New York City process, which is a whole. Could be a whole other show.
- [54:44]
B
But.
- [54:44]
C
Yes. So Mayor Mom Donnie attended Bronx Science, which is one of the specialized schools. The specialized schools are known to be very well appointed, very well resourced. And there's also a handful of other schools that are a lot of parents in New York City consider very desirable that have a lot of bells and whistles. I mean, we're talking about schools that have planetariums. We're talking about schools that have mock courtroom robotics labs. And then you have schools that have not even the basics, including libraries. So, yes, many of the specialized schools have, you know, even more than one librarian. And while other schools have, you know, zero. So there is definite inequities in how these schools are resourced and how they are appointed. Different belt.
- [55:38]
B
I just also wanted to mention that before he went to Bronx Science, which was a specialized public high school, he attended private schools in New York City. And, you know, and I mean, you know, I'm not going to go after him for that and his parents and their decision. But I will say this. If New York City public school parents know this, if you talk to private school parents in the city, like, their schools have librarians and fancy libraries and, you know, many other things. You just would not see in a private school in New York City a school without at least one librarian. And so that shows that, like, this is they are valuable and for rich people, they are not a. They are not a needless luxury. Right. They are considered incredible, you know, an incredibly important part of, of a, you know, of an elite education.
- [56:34]
C
And I would just add that a lot of the, even the city council members we worked with, you know, before we started talking to them about this problem, they weren't really aware that this was a problem. And then now that we know the scope of this problem, so I feel like it's. There's plenty of politicians and elected officials who are not really aware of this problem. As we said, it's a quiet problem. And we are more than happy to share our information and bring anyone up to speed, but oftentimes, once we do speak to them or share the information, people are kind of shocked and horrified. So that's, that's the good thing.
- [57:11]
D
Right?
- [57:12]
B
And, and again, for, for anybody who, like, grew up in New York City and is, you know, over about 35, which is most, but not all of our city government. I mean, it's not our mayor either. But, you know, even if, if they went to public school, they had a librarian in their school, right? And so, like, we had a lot of the city council members sharing stories of their amazing elementary school or high school librarians and not realizing that this generation of kids had lost him.
- [57:42]
A
Well, and forgive me, sending your kid to private school is not a likely option many people can exercise, especially when some of those schools, the tuition rivals undergraduate tuition at a university. And looking at paying 50 or 60 thousand dollars a year to send your child to elementary school is a little prohibitive for most individuals. But hearing some of the numbers of what it would cost to educate your child in New York City and go to the private schools is just not something that many families can make happen. And that shouldn't be the solution. I'm sorry, it shouldn't be the solution. So what can librarians and listeners tuning in right now do to support your campaign? What can we do to make sure that your efforts as the Librarians Equal Literacy Campaign wages on in 2026? What can we do?
- [58:46]
D
So the first thing everyone can do is follow us on Instagram ibrarians =literacy. We promise we make it as fun and engaging as possible. The second thing everyone can do is join our mailing list, which you can sign up for on our website, librariansequaliteracy.org we promise we only email when we have important information and news so we don't clog your inbox. And you're always welcome to email us directly@librariansequaliteracymail.com and just to emphasize it's librarian either equal, not equals, right?
- [59:22]
A
No, no, no. But friends we're gonna include all of these links in the show notes. So I really do encourage you to take a look at the things that have been put together because it really has been a concerted effort over the years to try and make positive change in the public schools of New York City. Marissa, Jenny, and Rachel, you are wonderful. The fact that the three of you have gotten together and have worked together to make sure that the students of New York City public schools have the school libraries staffed with certified school librarians. Marissa, I'm excited you're going to be joining the ranks of librarians. I'm always inspired when parent advocates get together. Thank you so much for everything you're doing.
- [60:09]
B
Thank you.
- [60:10]
D
Thank you. Amy.
- [60:11]
C
Thank you so much for having us. Amy.
- [60:22]
A
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