One of the reasons the SCOE, FTWG, FTRWG, and TAG groups worked so hard was to increase member engagement as requested by member surveys. It seems that many councilors are waiting to participate until the virtual sessions or perhaps council forum. During the Youth Council Caucus meeting today, we discussed our disappointment not hearing from any other councilors about the vital issues in our resolutions to council: EDI and Intellectual Freedom attacks on school librarians. Should we just assume all councilors are in agreement and are just waiting until Council 3 to vote on the resolutions we brought forward? Perhaps the difficulty arises because councilors were more comfortable commenting via email instead of on Connect? We have changed our paths of communication and discussion. Not all councilors attend the council forums and council meetings occurring during the day are difficult to focus on when we are teaching, so asynchronous communication would be deeply appreciated.
Many school and youth librarians are under attack. The inequities of service to the youth of our nation are increasing. There was a decrease of 20% of school library positions that greatly impacted BIPOC youth. Book deserts are increasing - leaving students without access to school libraries. Many school librarians believe the current and TAG proposals do not guarantee representation of all types of libraries on the executive board. Let's look back through the years and track how many years the EB has NOT had a school librarian represented. I am not content to have someone say they will represent school librarians when they do not research our needs or respond to the censorship and personal attacks we are experiencing.
These issues deserve engagement. I encourage all councilors to read the resolutions and to respond. Ask questions. Seek how you can support the school and youth librarians in our association and our profession. If you are running for executive board or any offices, make sure you are researching the issues and are prepared to represent us. This is a time for engagement and speaking out. Perhaps we need to discuss what we really mean when we say we want to increase member engagement and how we are serving on council currently.
Thank you, Mike, for pointing out the punctuation and grammar errors because it showed someone was reading the resolutions.
See you all online at the meetings this week.
Sincerely,
Diane Chen, AASL Division Councilor
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Diane R. Chen
School Librarian @ Stratford STEM Magnet School
AASL Division Councilor
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Original Message:
Sent: Jan 16, 2022 07:36 PM
From: Mike Marlin
Subject: Resolution to Promote Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Efforts in AASL While Addressing Historical Effects of Racism
Another clear, sobering, and important messaging resolution which I truly appreciate.
Grammar caucus notes, comma after "Whereas" needs to be removed in Whereas #8!
First letter of each Resolved clause needs to be lower case, i.e. acknowledges, apologizes, commits, communicates, creates...
p.s. please insert "and" after the semicolon at the end of Resolved clause 8
Thanks!
Mike L. Marlin
Director, California Braille and Talking Book Library
ALA Councilor at Large
Sacramento, CA
Email: mmarlin33.3@gmail.com
Mobile: (916) 243-9778
Original Message:
Sent: 1/12/2022 2:13:00 PM
From: Aaron Dobbs
Subject: Resolution to Promote Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Efforts in AASL While Addressing Historical Effects of Racism
The Resolutions Committee received the attached AASL Resolution (attached) and background (below) from Diane Chen, AASL Councilor (I made minor edits to the text below to reflect current status).
"At our AASL Board fall retreat, we unanimously passed the attached resolution ...[it has been also shared with] the Youth Council Caucus group on ALA Connect... The attached version has a few grammatical corrections as suggested via email among school librarian councilors. I will keep the version date updated so you will know that you are looking at the most current version.
I am glad that we can acknowledge the past, while sharing how we have evolved to be doing better in our EDI initiatives - despite past and current imperfections."
My apologies to AASL for losing track of this resolution.
-Aaron
:-)'