The Hempfield Area School District’s potential closure of the libraries at the high school and Harrold Middle School due to the resignation of the sole librarian is the kind of situation far too common at the school district. While partially reopened by using a middle school librarian, the long-term use of the library is up for debate. The school board previously made great efforts to ban some books and perhaps thinks it is easier and cheaper to just ban all books.
After the board botched the high school renovation project, taxpayers, residents, parents and alumni have legitimate reasons to question the district’s priorities and practices. If this community wants to attract families with children, nothing says quality education like an aging high school without a functional library.
The district may claim that library usage was dwindling due to electronic resources, a reason to potentially reduce access or shutter it permanently. That would demonstrate an utter lack of commitment to quality education and reimagination of the modern library.
In an era when people read less, fall for disinformation and cannot engage anything longer than a tweet, the district should be expanding use of the library for information literacy, research, writing and reading as a lifelong skill and passion that makes better students, citizens, economic actors and humans. Any decision to eliminate or reduce access to the library would be an embarrassment to public education and our community.
Paul S. Adams
Hempfield