June+14,+2013

Council Meeting #4 Date: June 14, 2013 Time: 12:00 – 3:00 Place: St. Alloysius School, 223 W. 132nd Street, NYC

12:00 - 12:30 Greetings and Introductions 12:30 - 2:00 Announcements and Information 2:00 - 2:30 New Business 2:30 - 3:00 Projects of Council Members
 * __Members in attendance__** : Linda Cuff (Chair), Christine Hatami (Secretary), Robert Farrell, Margaret Dennehy, Sally Young, Arlene Dominguez, Jessica Hochman, Linda Bowie-Williams, Jody Howard
 * __SLS Office Staff in attendance__** : Melissa Jacobs Israel, Elizabeth Naylor-Gutierrez, Lynne Kresta Smith, Leanne Ellis, Olga Nesi, Ric Hasenyager
 * __Documents at meeting:__** Library Council Members
 * __Agenda:__**

Linda opened the meeting, her last as Chair of the Council. Elections will be postponed until the fall, as we do not have the quorum needed. Arlene will take over the position of Chair and members will need to choose a new Secretary. //NYCSLS Updates// Lynn and Elizabeth gave a report from the Spring Exploratorium. There were almost 400 attendees who had a wide variety of activities to choose from. Requests were made for PD on book talking and this will be considered for future workshops. Jessica offered that students from Pratt may be available to showcase their book talking talents. Lynn reported that 292 schools now participate in the MyLibraryNYC program. There will be 401 participants by next year. The goal is to involve 525 schools, with future expansion into Brooklyn and Queens. The public libraries are expanding their staff to conduct needed outreach. As a result of the program, 40 schools have been added to the Destiny system, with an additional 72 migrating to Destiny from other systems. There will be more collaboration between the librarian and the staff, creating a more prominent role for librarians. And several principals have inquired about hiring a certified librarian so that they could to participate in the program. Ric reported that there are currently 813 schools on Destiny out of 1200 school buildings. About 50-100 schools are on other systems and approximately 250 schools are still not automated. Automation allows for the gathering of system-wide statistics, such as the average age of our collections, which is 1997. Melissa said that weeding is still an issue in some schools. Ric said that some schools have “Winnebago in a box”, meaning that they purchased an automation system but never conducted the retrospective conversion. Elizabeth stated it may be time for Council members to present at other education conferences, such as NCTE, to highlight the contributions that librarians can make to the Common Core. Sally volunteered to be a presenter. Elizabeth said that it would be helpful if anyone has connections to these organizations to get this going. //Update on City Council Hearing// Ric reported on the recent City Council hearing on staffing of school libraries. The hearing was held on May 6th and can be viewed online. The City Council convened the hearing to discuss the fact that the DOE is out of compliance with the state mandate and wanted to know what needed to be done to hire enough certified librarians to be in compliance. Ric testified that there are currently 306 certified librarians and another 300 would need to be hired. There are 17 ATR librarians and about 40 resumes, which means that this is a shortage area. The DOE does allow exceptions to the hiring freeze in shortage areas. Ric explained that the state regulation allowed for a waiver to provide equivalent services, which may be useful in Campus libraries, and that the DOE will be submitting that soon. A survey will be sent out to principals asking if they have a librarian, the amount of time the librarian spends on library duties, if no librarian how are students receiving state mandated library services, etc. Christine said that the BEDS survey includes similar questions, which was used to collect data back in 2008 when the union began investigating the library staffing issue. Ric said that he would be meeting with network and cluster leaders about what is expected in the library. Olga said that administrators need to see a clear connection between a strong library program and academic achievement. //New Teacher Evaluations// The new teacher evaluations (APPR) are under discussion. Cluster teachers serving in the library will be included. It is not clear if the librarians will be included in the required evaluations. The Commissioner offered two options for those staff members who have no test data, which is to use the Danielson rubric or the existing S/U rating. Ric feels that the Danielson rubric is weak on the instructional piece. We need to communicate with the Commissioner, and possibly with Danielson, to create a quality rubric that addresses all the work of school librarians, both teaching and administrative. Plans for professional development with teachers must begin, with a focus on teacher development. Sally added that administrators who supervise librarians need PD as well. Ric said that we could include an administrator track for our conferences. Approximately 700 schools have registered for the NOVEL databases. There will be an additional survey for principals about this free resource. PD on the NOVEL databases will continue next year. We have added two consultants for MyLibraryNYC to focus on PD, handle questions and assist librarians. One will serve the NYPL users and the other will serve Queens and Brooklyn. We are looking at different dates and venues for the fall conference. Many librarians provide PD for their staff on election day and are unable to attend our conference if held on that day. Ric reported that a new bid will go out for CCD collections that will include e-books. If this is not finalized by November, CCD schools will be advised to go ahead and place their orders. We would like to add more digital resources to libguide and will need PD on how to curate digital collections. We will need to create a guidance document for using the collection and how to best share these resources with others. Currently, e-books cannot be shared, which is a requirement of the CCD collections. Robert reported that currently high school students do not have access to the CUNY library collections but that an arrangement could be made to allow access. An inventory of services offered to schools is being conducted to promote the high school/college collaboration. A group will be meeting in August to plan curriculum models. He will present at ALA in 2014 and at the Uncommon Core in August with Leanne and Curtis. He has authored a book chapter and article in SLJ. Lehman College has acquired the Lincoln Center Institute collection which NYC librarians will be able to access. Collaboration with the education librarians from CUNY would support this work. Jody reported that there would be a new President at Palmer soon. They have been losing enrollment since 2010 and were given a conditional accreditation. They were told to develop new ways to measure and evaluate data, which they are working on. Doctoral students have expressed an interest in working with Master’s level students. Three Universities (Old Dominion in Virginia, University of Nebraska at Omaha, and LIU) have developed a cognate of courses for Ph.D. or Ed.D. students who will be working with students in MSLIS programs after they attain their Ph.D.'s/Ed.D's. These will be Ph.D. level classes for students who have a school library background. The program is called NxtWave and they are awaiting word on the $500,000 funding from IMLS. Regardless, they are going ahead with developing and offering the courses. Jody added that she will be presenting at AASL. Arlene reported that 70 schools participated in Family Reading Night this year. Next year they will have less, maybe 50 families. As part of the Summer Reading program, a walking map to the local public library will be provided. The Library Reach grant for next year will be $60,000. Arlene will be the next Chair of the Council in the fall. Sally reported that the new library at Forest Hills is now open after having completed renovations. Linda reported that New Visions has two more charter schools in addition to four existing charters. Only two of these schools have library services. Margaret, our host for this meeting, reported that she had received a mini-grant which she used to purchase a class set of iPads. She shared a student exchange project with students in Los Angeles highlighting works by Walter Dean Myers and Romeare Bearden in honor of Black History month.
 * Greetings and Introductions**
 * Announcements and Information**
 * New Business**
 * Projects of Council Members**

The meeting was adjourned at 3PM. Next meeting: To Be Announced Respectfully submitted by Christine Hatami