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Teaching Librarian 15.indd The Teaching Librarian volume 15, no. 1 31 Anybody home? Who's really left in Ontario's school libraries? positions outnumber secondary positions by three to one, mostly because there are more elementary schools (it must be remembered that most of these positions are part-time). Staffing formulas If they staff school libraries at all, most boards do so according to the population of the individual school. In some cases, they follow the Ministry formula of 1.0 Full Time Equivalent/909 students or some other arbitrary formula (1.3 FTE/1000 students, for example). This leads to a wide range of staffing situations within schools, particularly at the elementary level, where numbers rarely warrant a full-time position. The status of a teacher-librarian position in the elementary panel can dip as low as .1 (which represents one half-day a week). Secondary schools are far more likely than elementary schools to be staffed with full- time teacher-librarians. This is sometimes due to a formula being applied to a larger high school population, but some boards do have a set policy of creating full-time positions in secondary school libraries. A very small number of boards actually supply more than a 1.0 FTE to their high school libraries, so that there is no question of the library closing during the teacher-librarian's prep time. And then, of course, there are the boards that employ no teacher- librarians at all. If we look at the elementary panel, well over half of Ontario school boards (44 out of 72) have no teacher-librarians, not even for a half-day a week. Some boards are defensive about this situation, one director of education remarking to me that the lack of teacher-librarians was "a red herring," because the board put Glenn Turner a lot of other staff into the schools "for literacy." In most cases, the rationale seems strictly financial--money that could have been used for teacher-librarian salaries has simply been used elsewhere. I found examples of many different models that boards are using to keep their school libraries functional without actually paying teacher- librarians. In some cases, cheaper "professional" librarians without teaching experience have been hired. In other cases, one teacher- librarian is responsible for several schools, or a department head serves as teacher-librarian in name only while a technician runs the shop. In at least one board, school libraries are entirely staffed and run by volunteers. Technical support As with teacher-librarian jobs, full-time library technician positions tend to be a secondary school phenomenon. The vast majority of positions overall are part-time with a typical range of .2 to .5 per school. No Teacher- Librarians Part-Time Teacher- Librarians Only Mix of Part- and Full-time Teacher- Librarians Full-Time Teacher- Librarians Only Elementary 44 10 16 2 Secondary 25 3 15 29 Table 3 Status of teacher-librarians, by panel Table 4 Number of Boards with library technicians, by status No Library Technicians Part-Time Technicians Only Mix of Part- and Full-Time Technicians Full-Time Technicians Only Elementary 32 22 18 0 Secondary 21 9 15 27