Cooperation over Competition: Public Libraries and Public Schools

I will begin this post with a disclaimer. It was my intent to avoid issues that were either vaguely or overtly political because the internet has a habit of remembering these things and I live and work in a small town. However, after reading two articles about impending teacher strikes, I got to thinking about the relationship between public libraries and public schools and I thought, “Hey, this might be an interesting blog post.”

So here we are.

Perhaps characterizing this issue as political is a bit of a misnomer. It’s political, certainly, but I suppose the point of this post is not to take a side—rather, I want to pose some questions.

But first, some background. Chicago Public School teachers are planning to go on strike tomorrow if negotiations fail. There is impassioned debate from all sides of the issue.

I think that everyone can agree that these are difficult times for taxpayer-supported institutions. Nickels are scrutinized; organizations are forced to justify their existence in a way that they have not had to before. In some cases, it pits institutions against each other because public money has become limited.

My question is this: how can we insure the continued cooperation of public libraries and public school libraries when the competition for resources intensifies?

The last thing that I want to see is public schools pitted against public libraries, but sometimes I wonder if the current economic climate might push us to that extreme. (I should also note that Mayor Emanuel's initial proposal for the city's budget cut $6 million in funding to the Chicago Public Library). The fact is that we need both: schools cannot replace libraries and libraries cannot replace schools. The cooperative relationship between public libraries and public schools enhances youth services in both institutions. But when the existence of public institutions gets reduced to numbers and dollar signs, distinctions become blurry and the effects of cooperative services are minimized (“If schools already have libraries then we don’t need a children’s department in the public library…”). What can we do as professionals to insure that this is more clearly understood by lawmakers and taxpayers? And how do we go about doing that without resorting to competing for tax dollars?