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Book Talk Flap Followed by Librarian’s DismissalBellevue (Calif.) Unified School District Superintendent Tony Roehrick terminated the library consultant contract of Richie Partington November 21, two days after Partington declined to discuss with Kawana School Principal Jesse Escobedo the merits of The Last Book in the Universe until after Escobedo read the book. The termination came six weeks after Partington, a member of the 2008–09 Caldecott Committee of the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, became the first professional librarian to serve the 58-year-old K–6 district in at least a decade. He announced the action on several library discussion lists, triggering a flood of protest letters to the district as well as the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat. Among them was a December 4 op-ed from the novel’s author, Rodman Philbrick, who asked rhetorically, “If [Partington] wasn’t qualified to choose appropriate books, then who is?” Partington told American Libraries that his one-year, $21,000 contract was funded out of a $250,000 grant from the Improving Literacy through School Libraries program to update the district’s four library collections, software, and policies; hone the skills of the paraprofessionals running the libraries; and provide programming to students. Accordingly, he gave a number of book, most recently to Kawana 6th-graders in mid-November, during which he read chapter one of Last Book. Because several dozen students “clamored” to read it, Partington said he returned November 19 with four copies to catalog into the collection—only to be told by the Kawana library technician that the principal had forbidden the book’s acquisition. Leaving the campus immediately, he e-mailed Escobedo and Roehrick, about what Partington characterized as the book’s banning and declined Roehrick’s request for him to meet with Escobedo until the latter had read Last Book. “I couldn’t go back into that school and look those kids in the eye if I’d turned around and said, ‘Oh well, the principal didn’t read it, but he said it’s a bad book so I can’t put it in here,’” Partington explained, noting the irony of defending a book whose first sentence is: “If you’re reading this, it must be 1,000 years from now because nobody around here reads anymore.” “There is no removal of the book from use in our district,” countered Roehrick, who told AL that “teachers are free to use the book [in the classroom]” without consulting higher-ups. The Last Book incident was “one small piece of my decision to terminate [Partington’s] contract,” he said, emphasizing that he acted because “I didn’t believe we were getting what we were contracting for”—collection development “through a collaborative process of working with our library techs, teachers, and our site principals.” Explaining that he became school superintendent in July, Roehrick added, “We’re 100% supportive of effective, quality, rich libraries and library experiences for our students” and that he favored hiring credentialed librarians “if it’s something that would serve the district.” In the meantime, Partington’s role is being filled by Michael Powell, manager for library services at the Sonoma County Office of Education’s Instructional Resources Center and the librarian of record for the Bellevue school district. Noting that he has acquired Last Book for the IRC, which makes it available to every school district in the county including Bellevue, Powell told AL that he believed Partington “passed up an opportunity to create a dialogue” with the school principal. “If I’ve heard something from a third party, I’m going to want to go to the originating party and find out what exactly is the problem,” he said, citing the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom document Coping with Challenges: “A few simple communication techniques can go a long way toward defusing emotion and clearing up misunderstanding.” Posted December 5, 2007. |
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