Greensburg Salem School District officials are considering the elimination of the district’s elementary and middle school librarian positions as it prepares for a difficult budget year.

“We still have months of work left to do to get to the point where we can balance the budget,” board President Ron Mellinger said.

The proposal would eliminate three librarian positions. Those librarians would become classroom teachers, filling one vacancy and causing two less-experienced teachers to be furloughed, according to Superintendent Gary Peiffer. Furlough decisions are based on seniority.

The move would save the district just over $275,000, Peiffer said.

It would be the district’s first furloughs since 2010, when the board furloughed three teachers. It has also eliminated numerous vacant positions as staff retired or resigned.

The board had a special meeting this week, when it approved sending the state notice of its intention to furlough two teachers. This was done to comply with a state mandate that districts give 60 days notice before making furloughs, but does not mean that the decision is final, according to Mellinger.

“It’s just an option in the worst-case scenario,” he said.

Opposition to the decision is already forming.

“If this stands, children will not have a librarian until they’re in high school, and that’s much too long,” said Sara Deegan, whose two children attend Hutchinson Elementary and who is a librarian at Greensburg Hempfield Area Library.

She hopes to organize parents to oppose the measure and find alternate solutions to the district’s budgets woes.

“Hopefully, many people will attend the next board meeting,” she said.

She contacted John Charstka, director of Illinois-based nonprofit Every Library. The organization will likely assist with organizing a petition and other advocacy efforts, Charstka said.

“It has a negative impact over the educational life of every child when a school librarian is not in place,” he said.

Peiffer sent a letter to parents explaining the budgetary pressures that led to the decision. The district’s finances are always tight, but the economic shock of the coronavirus pandemic is expected to make the 2020-21 school year one of Greensburg Salem’s most difficult, according to Peiffer.

The economic downturn is expected to lead to significantly reduced tax revenue, and the district doesn’t consider raising taxes an option this year, the letter said.

“To increase taxes at this time would hurt the very families the district is trying to help,” Peiffer wrote.

The district has an estimated $3.4 million in its reserve fund balance. That’s not enough to rely on to cover a deficit, Mellinger said.

“We’re at that crossroads now where that fund balance isn’t really an option,” he said.

Mellinger said district leaders are considering how the libraries would operate without librarians.

“That’s something we’re still working on, a plan for the libraries,” he said. “We’re still trying to work out scenarios where kids can use the libraries during the day, but it’s a fine line, because if you take out the librarian, how can you put someone else in there to do their jobs?”

Peiffer said students and teachers will still be able to use the library.

“The elimination of the elementary and middle school library program does not mean that the libraries will be closed and boarded up,” he wrote in his letter.

Charstka said it takes a librarian to make a library what it is — otherwise it’s just a reading room.

“They’re not going to be teaching information literary skills, they’re not going to be teaching how to do research, they’re not going to be teaching how to identify fake news,” he said.

Every Library is no stranger to Pennsylvania. The group is active in Philadelphia, which has the lowest library-to-student ratio among school districts in the United States, according to Charstka.

It assisted Greensburg Hempfield Area Library in its 2017 campaign to create a library tax.

Schools nationwide have been cutting librarians for years. Since 2000, districts cut more than 10,000 full-time school librarian positions, a drop of about 20%, according to the School Library Journal.

The Greensburg Salem School Board’s next discussion meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. May 13. The board has been holding public meetings via the video conferencing site Zoom because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Correction: An earlier version of this story gave an inaccurate length of time since the district last furloughed teachers.

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