Those are the numbers Megan Cusick, a librarian at Nancy B. Jefferson Alternative School, laid out at a recent meeting held by the parent group Raise Your Hand.
“As many of you recall, around the time we went on strike, we talked about how we had 160 schools that did not have school libraries,” Cusick said. “This shows what came after.”
Cusick and her colleagues have started speaking out about the dwindling number of librarians in CPS. They showed up at last month’s Board of Education meeting and many spoke at last week’s budget hearings.
CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett says the librarian shortage is because there aren’t enough librarians in the hiring pool.
“It’s not that we don’t want to have librarians in libraries,” Byrd-Bennett said at last month’s board meeting. “Nobody can argue that point, but the pool is diminished.”