Approaches to Librarianlessness

A couple of ways of handling these layoffs: 

Well first, the word is going around that Cheney anyhow is hiring. So maybe people just drive a little further, depending on where they live. 

The opinion of the Spokesman columnist is that an unconstitutional levy is bound to be floated as a solution, whereas that was precisely the problem the court ruling was supposed to have solved. 

Further ironies: in one building, where the teaching staff is relatively senior, no one is being let go, but a few will probably have to take their work across the way to a school that's losing 15 teachers--because they're all new, because of the rapid turnover there. And who knows, perhaps they'll bring some stability, but perhaps they'll just be resented and in turn resent having to adjust to a very different school culture there, much better than it used to be, but still a rough place. 

For instance, subbing there the other day, there was the kid who really thought he should try to mock me over the layoffs. I asked him if could do his book work on the computer he had open in front of him instead of a book. He insisted that what he was doing was much more important than reading the history book--and fair enough, it was going to get him a job, he said proudly, that paid $18-20/hr, and how was that history teaching job going for me with all the layoffs? I responded that I wasn't a history teacher, but a sub, and so the layoffs did not pertain to me, but that it was a good burn all the same, and I'd leave a note for his teacher to that effect so he could follow up and let him know his answer.

Meanwhile, a day or two earlier, over at the high school which hadn't had a single teacher laid off, I'd sat through another class in the room where I was subbing during a prep period. The teacher of that class spent the first half of the period discussing the layoffs with such an air of well-intentionedness and leveling with her class, asking them to be extra kind to their teachers who might be getting the news that they'd have to be picking up slack around the district next year. To the point that kids kept circling back to--why the pay structure was such that, given the enormous budget, positions were being let go, and new buildings constructed--she told a story about her colleagues who'd used thousands of dollars on a pointless training--they were retiring the next year, but traveled down to Texas anyhow because if they didn't use the money, it would be folded back into the administrative operating budget and would not be there for the school to use the next year anyway. Or, to the plan that certain classes, like the one she taught, be combined to save funds, she replied airily, saying that they [the district admin] don't know what we do here. Then, when fully half the class period was gone, with kids just as ignorant about the cuts as before, only now thinking they understood and so could discourse knowledgeably about them, and virtuously support their teachers in this trying time--she turned to the lesson, which consisted in  doodling on their folders for decoration. 

I would report this sort of thing if anyone asked. But I suspect that the admin already have a pretty accurate idea what goes on in that class.

For the most part, I include myself in all this, a superfluous observer of the trainwreck. But what about this: planting trees for the lost librarians. As a memorial slightly more permanent than doodled-on folders or stray reflections.