School Libraries Are BACK

On Febuary 12th the school libraries went somewhat back to normal at Alvarado Elementary and in New Haven School District. Each school will have a full time librarian, but their job description has changed. Their official description was Library Media Specialist. Now they are called Library Media Technicians. The change of title is due to the Race to the Top grant. When the district applied for the grant, their intention was to have a full time Media Technician assigned at each school. However, the district did not get the full amount of money for which they applied. To make up for the gap the district changed the job title and description of the librarians and added to their duties.

Now librarians will not only teach most classes at every school, but almost all librarians will also be on the advisory technology committee of New Haven. Librarians are assigned or volunteer for technology committees to chart the technology course for the district. This alone is a very big commitment. They will also barcode all the books and textbooks and do all their own cataloging of books in their library. This adds considerably to the burden of elementary school librarians. In the past they taught classes and purchased books, but the district office had a library technician who did the barcoding and cataloging for all the elementary schools. New Haven no longer has a district library technician.

Librarians will continue to purchase books if funds are available for their own libraries. They will also be responsible for billing students for lost books, including textbooks, and weeding (deleting obsolete books), maintaining the high quality of books expected in a school library, and maintaining the physical surroundings parents and teachers desire for a pleasant learning environment for students. As of now, at some schools, some librarians will also be teaching physical education, while a colleague teaches some media classes. It is hoped at Alvarado the prep classes will be held for a grade level all at the same period for each of the preps, PE, music, science, and media. This way grade levels will be able to have professional collaboration time while their children are at their prep.

Paula Figdor is back at Pioneer as librarian. Ron Bragg is the Library Media Technician at Emanuele. Carolyn Vranjas is back at Kitayama, and Carol Engberg is now at Searles. Alvarado now has Donna Leaf as Library Media Technician. Hillview Crest does not have a permanently assigned Library Media Technician. The former librarian at Alvarado, Alisha Valine, is assigned to Ceasar Chavez. The staff and students thank Mrs. Valine for all her hard work at Alvarado.

Alisha Valine at Halloween

Partially Open Media Centers

As of this date, it looks like the libraries/media centers will be open part time in the elementary schools. Some of the media specialists have been assigned to 3 schools so the schools will have 10 hours of media a week, basically to check in and out books in 20 minute periods, or have teacher signups for checkout. Alisha Valine has been assigned to Alvarado, Pioneer, and Kitayama.

 Alisha Valine

Carol Engberg from Eastin has been assigned to Hillview Crest, Searles, and Emmanuel.  Beth Morris Wong from Hillview Crest will teach 20 periods of science and 10 periods of media at Eastin. Carolyn Vranjes of Kitayama has been assigned to teach science at an elementary school. Paula Figdor from Pioneer is going to be a classroom teacher. Media specialists will checkout textbooks to the students. Textbooks are now barcoded.

It will not be usual media classes that students have had in the past. Perhaps principals can figure out how to make time for lessons, which in the past have included the Dewey Decimal System, alphabetizing, readers theater, technology, such as Photoshop, Goggle Earth, or Internet searching and safety; author studies, non fiction research and the development of new knowledge, and building a student network of connections with the teacher's core curriculum. This is still up for discussion. Students in K-2 will probably not be able to check out books.

Early 1990's: The Staff and BTSA

Alvarado was a k-4 school with about 400 students. Julia Strong-Yoho was the principal and Tess Melendez was the assistant principal. Tess was in the process of getting her doctorate, so after two years at AE she left to go to a principalship in another district. In 1993 Barbara Debarger replaced her as the new AP. Marge Slakey was the Resource Specialist. Bernadette Muhlestein was the Science Specialist. Susan Fivelstad was the Reading Specialist. Sharon Chambers was the Media Specialist. Mark Simmons was the P.E. teacher. Laurel Tanner was the music teacher. Barbara Murkland was the school psychologist. Bernadette Hawkins and Constance Reed were special education teachers. Constance was also a footbag or hacky sack champion. She would demonstrate her skills and try to teach the students how to do it. The students loved it. Sally Kaneko, a first grade teacher, was our expert on Early Childhood Development. She and partner, Bee Legaspi Medders, who joined her in 1991, went to Marin county for training.

There are two photos for some of the 1990's because we had a huge staff which included all the support staff such as aides, the school secretary, and custodian. In later years the classified staff members were not included in the photographs. Lenore Sanchez remained as the school secretary. Barbara Finnigan was a clerk III. Manual Perez was the long time school custodian. Grace Paniaquia worked part time in the health room.

BTSA stands for Beginning Teachers Support Association. BTSA has been instrumental in bringing in many great new teachers into Alvarado and the New Haven School District. These teachers student teach in our schools and learn from master teachers. Cathleen Hampton has been an active leader in BTSA since the inception and a long time master teacher. As of 2011 Mrs Hampton remains as the BTSA coordinator. According to Ms. Hampton, the first year of BTSA was 1993. It evolved out of the California New Teacher Project which Annette Iwamoto and Virginia Swihart (Lynne's Thomson's mom) were instrumental in developing it at the state level. All of it came from the fact that teachers were leaving the profession very quickly because of lack of support. The statistics were 50% left within the first 5 years. New Haven was one of the first BTSA projects in the state (I think there were only 10), so we were an original! For the next 20 years the BTSA program provided training after school for all new teachers in the district. This was a required training and very extensive which also involved some classroom visits by the project coordinator.

1992-1993 Staff

Julia Strong-Yoho Principal

Barbara Debarger Assistant Principal

Click on picture to enlarge.