Doesn't the average city worker deserve a reasonable increase?" District Council 37 represents social workers, secretaries, librarians, cafeteria aides and thousands of other public employees.
Sen. Harkin and his colleagues probably think that counselors, reading specialists, librarians, classroom aides, parent coordinators and teachers whose jobs are being cut make a positive contribution to student achievement.
Some schools have replaced librarians with aides to keep the school library doors open, diminishing the level and quality of instruction and projects afforded to students.
About half of the 600 elementary and middle school libraries are without librarians or aides, denying tens of thousands of students regular access to nearly $100 million worth of books, according to district data.
Last February, the Los Angeles Times determined that "About half of the 600 elementary and middle school libraries" in the city were "without librarians or aides denying tens of thousands of students regular access to nearly $100 million worth of books, according to district data".
The Los Angeles school district, however, decided that librarians and library aides were expendable when it made budget cuts, and Murphy was one of them.
"The overwhelming majority of people who run branch libraries earn $37,265, even though they have huge responsibilities," said Ray Markey, president of the union representing 1,800 librarians and library aides in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island.
Another student described how the DOE's budget cuts stripped his Bronx school of resources such as textbooks, librarians and school aides -- and then added it to the city's list of failing schools.
And by cutting $1.5 billion to "general-purpose" education funding you are now forcing individual districts to lay off teachers and cut back on vital school services like nurses, custodians, teachers' aides, librarians, not to mention art and physical education programs which have already been eliminated in many of our schools.
But even some panel members who voted to approve the budget said they were troubled by reports of cutbacks that are forcing some schools to curtail programs and to eliminate personnel, including teachers' aides and librarians.
