"Unless someone like you...cares a whole awful lot...nothing is going to get better...It's not."
-Dr.Seuss
I grew up in the great state of Texas. That's right, the one and only. The great republic. The lone star state. The land of the free and home of the brave (well, Texas is most of it at least). The sunsets are piercing and fiery, the vast plains golden and endless, the summers sweltering...the mosquitoes...unlimited...anyways, Texas is the best.
Well, until recently that is.
You see, in July of 2011, Rick Perry signed a new budget bill into law in an attempt to balance a state budget more than twenty-five million in the red. I understand that sacrifices must be made to get out of debt. I really do. Last year, I had to get out of debt, and I had to cut tons of unnecessary things out of my budget—gas for the car, fast food, lunch...things like that. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. But when it came to the state budget, I don't understand how libraries fell into the category of "unnecessary".
One of the provisions of the bill from the beginning cut state funding for libraries down to almost nothing. The overall state library budget has decreased from 19.8 million to 7.2, and funding for the state agency's library programs has dropped from 12.8 million to 1.6. Personally, when I discovered that the bill was introduced to the House, I was appalled, but I never thought it would actually pass. I know us Texans ain't too well-known for our book learnin, but this is ridiculous. Obviously, ever since this bill was signed into law, librarians and educators across the state have been outraged. Why? Because all the money that was removed from the library budget used to fund around 88% of Texas' library programs. This means that rural libraries, which make up about 71% of all public libraries, will suffer greatly because they depend mostly on government funding; already, branches all over the state are beginning to close.
But what saddens me the most is that the children of this once great state will suffer more than anyone. Because education also suffered huge cuts in government funding, school districts were already pressed for cash when the bill was passed. Now as districts are struggling to meet state budgetary demands, many simply do not have the money to keep their school libraries up to state standards. In Houston ISD, the largest district in Texas, 20% of their libraries have closed and more than half of all school campuses are currently without a librarian, while others are replacing them with full-time library aids and, in some cases, volunteers!
In the movie, You Got Mail, there is a scene with Meg Ryan right after her homely, family-owned book store is bought out by the Barnes & Noble-like superstore, Fox Books. As Kathleen Kelly, Meg Ryan's character, sits down in the children's section of Fox Books, she overhears a conversation between one of the employees and a mother who is asking where she can find "the shoe books". The young employee has no clue where they are or even what they could be; that is when Kathleen, almost in tears from the memory of her store, tells the mother about the author, the other books in the series, and even where she could probably find them in the store. The passion that most librarians have for their jobs can go a long way to transform a library and make learning and reading something that kids ache for. To me, a library without a librarian and a librarian without a library is exactly the same thing with the same end result: they will learn from us, through our own actions, that libraries aren't that important. And that is something that I can not accept.
John Adams once said, "Liberty once lost is lost forever." It's on a shirt of mine actually. It reminds me, among many things, of the hundreds of dollars I once took from my car savings because I knew I could always save the money up again. I have come to realize that once you have money to spend, there is always something to buy, and now I see that the money is gone forever. It's not that I can't pay it back, but it is so much harder now that it is already gone.
Once our libraries are gone, I fear they will stay gone. It's not that we can't bring them back, but they'll say, "If one can go, why can't they all go?" and those that govern us will reason them all away along with the symbol of knowledge and power that goes along with them.
But Dr.Seuss' The Lorax gives me hope. He says, "My name is the Lorax, I speak for the trees." He speaks for them because they can't speak for themselves. They can't defend themselves, so the Lorax does it for them. I see Texas' new legislation bill not only as an attack on millenia of knowledge and genius but as an attack on children. Our children. And we must make it known through democracy that it is not ok. It is easy to feel like we can not make a difference in politics, but we can. I encourage everyone that reads this to start raising awareness of the issue by doing things like posting links about this to Facebook and writing our congressmen. It's a small step but it makes a difference if we all do a little. Then hopefully, Rick Perry and those in Congress will get the message: We speak for the children.
Here are links to websites I used:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/891465-264/texas_governor_signs_budget_cutting.html.csp
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Dozens-of-school-librarians-lost-to-budget-cuts-2279655.php
