At the Swampscott High School and Middle School the lack of a librarian available has made the libraries inaccessible for student use.
“We don’t have somebody there to monitor the room,” said Principal Edward Rozmiarek concerning the library’s open hours of 8:05am-2:30pm.
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Because the library at the high school is only opened during class time, many students lack the chance to use the facility, for both its resources and potential for a quiet space.
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“I don’t really have time to visit the library because I don’t have a study,” said Junior Ciara Silverman who expressed her thoughts on the availability of the room. “I find the library helpful because it allows me to get my work done.”
Many students feel that being unable to check out books from the extensive store at the school is wasteful and should be fixed. “In my study I know a lot of kids sit around with nothing to do because they have no work so maybe having the option to check out books would give them something,” said Junior Samantha Rizzo who spends many study breaks in the library.
“I’d like it to be temporary. Before we can do that we need to get something in place. We need a trained person to be able to do that,” said Rozmiarek.
Currently, the stocks of resources remained unable to be used, as there is no organized way to track who takes which books from the library. Without a permanent librarian in a full-time position, allowing students to borrow books remains impossible.
“For projects and papers kids always need primary and secondary sources so the library books would be perfect for that,” said Rizzo.
On October 22, the school committee meeting, presented by the president of the Massachusetts School Library Association, was focused on the library situation. They discussed what benefits a library can serve to students and provided assistance to the two schools as they strive to improve the organizations of the programs.
“There was no actual solution reached. However, the presentation demonstrated a lot of the qualities that a true librarian needs to have that we can benefit from as an entire school,” said senior Tristan Smith, who attended the meeting.
This issue is not exclusive to the High School, but instead is a town-wide issue. “They did say that they would begin discussion soon on bringing new librarians to the district, not only in the high school, but in all the schools,” said Smith.
