Talks about finance can be a tricky and sensitive subject. In the context of chronically underfunded public schools in New South Wales (NSW Teachers Federation, 2022), talks of where a very limited budget should be spent within a busy school can cause competitive angst . Lamb & Johnson (2012) suggest that before tackling the finance talks with school leader ship. that teacher librarians must first act as ‘collaborators’ who build partnerships with their teacher colleagues. This vital step of collaboration lays the foundation for the TL to better understand the curriculum requirements and reading interests of the school community and ensure that acquisition and collection development reflects these needs. It sets the library up as a space that is useful, relevant and a contributor to student achievment. Through mutual respect and trust, TLs can advocate for the significance of the library and its qualified staff within the wider school community.
When considering whether teacher librarians should have the responsibility of submitting a budget proposal to fund the library collection to the school’s senior management and/or the school community or whether such proposals should come from a wider group such as a school library committee NSW TL’s should be guided by a strong, local Collection Development Policy (CDP) that is supported by school leadership, reflects the context of the school and follows both NSW Department of Education and ASLA policy. The NSW Department of Education Library Policy (2019) describves the TL as a ‘…a specialist teacher who develops, manages and evaluates, on behalf of the principal, systems and procedures that include…library budgeting’ (para. 11) and while this indicates that the overall responsibility lies with the TL, the policy also indicates that ‘…Principals and teacher-librarians are responsible for… a detailed description of the support each library provides to meet the particular needs of the students of the school…’ (para. 4) and that TLs must ‘…collaborate with teachers in planning, implementing and evaluating teaching and learning programs…’ (para. 6).While some schools have developed custom and practice that the funding for the school library collection be distributed to teachers /departments so they have the power to determine what will be added to the library collection, it is the TL who knows what the overall composition of the collection needs to be. Further, to ensure that resources meet the future needs of a library in the context of a rapidly changing information landscape, ultimately final budgeting decisions should be the repsponsibility of the TL.
By working together as a collective group, overseen by the TL, to develop a CDP with criteria that reflects the needs of the school, Teacher Librarians can ensure that money spent through library acquisitions support the needs of the whole school community. ASLA’s (2016) Statement on School Library Resource Centre Funding states that TL’s should consult with school leaders to develop a budget that meets the learning needs of the school and ALIA (2017) suggests that the final authorship of a school’s budgeting policy should include school library staff, the Principal, and the finance department.
References:
Australian School Library Association. (2016). Statement on School Library Resource Centre Funding. https://asla.org.au/resources/Documents/Website%20Documents/Policies/policy_school_library_funding.pdf
Australian School Library Association & Victorian Catholic Teacher Librarians. (2017). A manual for developing policies and procedures in Australian school library resource centres. (2nd ed.). https://asla.org.au/resources/Documents/Website%20Documents/Policies/policies-procedures-manual_ed2.pdf
Lamb, A. & Johnson, H.L. (2012). Program administration: Budget management. The School Library Media Specialist. http://eduscapes.com/sms/administration/budget.html.
NSW Teachers Federation. (2022). Coalition’s $10bn in sweeteners for private schools while public schools remain underfunded. https://www.nswtf.org.au/news/2022/04/28/coalitions-10bn-in-sweeteners-for-private-schools-while-public-schools-remain-underfunded/