Following district-wide budget cuts proposed on Jan. 14, 2025, the DVHS library will lose librarian Allison Hussenet, as the motion passed on Feb. 25 reduces the teacher librarians each at Dougherty and Cal High to one. This will mean two staff at the DV library rather than three, and impact their classroom programming, extracurricular activities and potentially hours of operation.
“What I think may possibly happen is if you’re going from three to two, the two will have to take over whatever three were doing and try to figure out is there time to do all three people’s things?’’” library media coordinator Annalisa Raphael said. “Or are some things going to have to be cut because there are only two people?”
Currently, the library is open from 7:45 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. most days of the week. They may reduce this window if run by a single librarian next school year, particularly if Raphael, who is a classified staff member, also has her hours cut. To illustrate the effect this change would have, on Feb. 6 the team held a demonstration day with 8:15 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. hours. Patrons such as sophomore Zak Tandon, who regularly hangs out in the reading room and whose friends were unable to use the library printers on that date, noticed the difference.
“That really is terrible because sometimes people that don’t have a printer at home, they don’t have a friend they can print at, they can’t even go to the public library, so having that kind of resource on site is really important,” Tandon said. “And like, being able to check out books, because not everyone can go to the library before and after school. Sometimes lunch time or brunch time is the only time they can go, so it’s super important to have that time available for them.”
According to teacher librarian Kerri Pike Knapp, they may sacrifice teacher research assistance, where librarians present in classroom settings and help educators develop new curriculum, in favor of maintaining community spaces and student volunteering opportunities. However, it’s a conundrum.
“Do we keep the programming, you know, like the book clubs and the volunteering and these things that we think build important community for our students and for us, do we focus on that or the teaching and the research with classes?” Knapp asked. “Obviously, I want to do both. That’s what we’re able to do right now, because there’s three full-time people here. Something would have to give, and I think it would be the teaching and the research stuff so that we could keep the programming.”
As Knapp emphasized, besides daily educational matters, just creating a welcoming zone for DV students has been the goal for a long time. With various book clubs, National Novel Writing Month meetups, volunteering opportunities, and simply providing places to sit, the library staff have tried to maximize their open hours and atmosphere.
“In the general public and the world, libraries have been one of the only spaces on campus where anyone can enter at any time and they know that it’s a spot they can stay in, as opposed to maybe a classroom where the doors are locked after the teacher leaves,” Raphael said. “Any other space on campus has a ‘purpose’, but for a lot of students the library’s purpose is just to be a space to be in, which can be hopefully a comforting thought to students.”
“I think libraries are basically a fundamental human right, and I think the access to the kind of place that a library can be for some students is also really important,” Tandon said. “Stuff like the fact that our library has an LGBTQ+ book club can be really nice for queer students who might not have any other place to go and talk to other queer people or even just have a safer environment.”
Library volunteering and the Library Services elective provide more opportunities for students to socialize and contribute. Running the programs actually increases rather than decreases the staff workload, but students such as senior Nadianna Roy (who has volunteered for three years running) say they’ve loved the experience and are nervous about the cuts as well.
“Without the library I would have been very miserable, because it has introduced me to a lot more people and I’ve read a lot more books than I probably would have if I didn’t work in the library. I think the district does not understand that we have three librarians because we need three librarians,” Roy said. “You cannot cut out people that we need to keep the library running.”
The overall impact on student mental health from the budget cuts has been an area of focus in SRVUSD discussions, but with the attention primarily on counseling services, Knapp is worried. Hussenet, who joined the library in 2019 from the French department, would return to teaching French or English rather than leaving the school district, but Knapp does not miss her time as a solo librarian.
“The district is trying to focus on keeping the mental health side of student service, and it’s like, well, the library is a mental health service,” she said. “So why would we take this away, why would we make it harder for you guys when this is a safe space for kids? The hope is that if the two librarians have to go back to the classroom, then it’s only for a couple years and each year over the next couple years as things shake out, hopefully we can recover enough funding to restore the librarians back to the contract.”
Knapp compared the need for safe spaces like the library to the necessity to feed students before each school day.
“We can’t have hungry students, and we can’t have unsafe students, because then learning doesn’t happen,” she said. “And literally it takes this entire collective of over 200 staff people on this campus to make that happen, and so the idea that we’re going to have to cut into that because of a budget that is out of my control and out of your control and out of anyone at this site’s control is super frustrating.”
