“HRM has made the decision that they will no longer be funding librarians in schools”
This quote, although not a word for word transcription, was posted on social media this past weekend by Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development Brendan Maguire in response to questions being raised by school librarians in Halifax. At issue was a fairly robust rumour that, amid the current round of budgeting decisions, Halifax City Council was looking at changing the way it provides supplemental funding for HRCE schools.
In short, if the budget passes in one of its current iterations, a great many school libraries in HRCE will be unstaffed come September.
To understand the nuance here, one has to understand supplementary funding. Nova Scotia property owners, both residential and commercial, pay property tax. A portion of that tax goes to funding education; the Mandatory Education Tax, a rate which is set each year by the province. In HRM, property owners pay slightly more on their tax bill each year to provide additional funding to schools governed by the Halifax Regional Centre for Education (HRCE) as well as the Conseil Scolaire Acadian Provincial (CSAP).
This arrangement predates amalgamation, and every few years, HRCE and HRM revisit the agreement to discuss how the money is spent. The money, which topped $14 million last year, is used to offer extra Fine Arts programming across HRM through Halifax Regional Arts. Back in 2019, the agreement was changed so that the money could also be used to support other school enhancements. In 2024-25 supplementary funding was used to provide HRCE with 17 school social worker positions, and, more to the point on Minister Maguire’s comments, 75.4 Library Support Specialist (LSS) positions, positions which, it now seems, are in jeopardy of being cut.
In all my years of writing about educational research and policy, I have discoverd that there really aren’t many complete truisms in the field. Ideas and ideologies often have supporters and detractors, each side equally steeped in data and metrics. When it comes to the connection between school libraries and student outcomes, however, the evidence is as incontrovertible as it gets.
According to a 2024 article in American Progress magazine, there have been no less than 60 studies done spanning 50 years of schooling to show that schools that have libraries staffed by certified librarians outperform schools that do not. A 2021 report from the Ontario Library Association found “the active presence and participation of qualified librarians makes a positive and significant difference in student academic achievement”. Research on libraries and student achievement in 2023 concluded that students who were in schools with a full-time certified librarian had statistically significantly higher test scores in reading and math than students attending schools without full-time certified librarians.
Essentially, when it comes to our students’ education, having a library and folks to staff them is kind of a big deal.
I reached out to several HRM councillors for this piece, and I want to be clear that none I spoke with are “anti-library”. In fact at least one of them, Councillor Shawn Cleary from District 9, Halifax West Armdale has been very vocal in his support for maintining the agreement in its current from. Other members of council, however, are of the mind that these positions should not be financed from supplementary funding, but should, rather, be funded by the Province. According to Cleary, “Many of my colleagues believe, rightly, [that] the provincial government should be funding these important school services.”
Cleary concluded, however, that “The unfortunate reality is they probably won’t”.
So that brings us to our current connundrum. Everyone understands (or at least they should) the tremendous academic value of school libraries. For those of us who work in the system, we also understand the tremendous programming that goes on in those spaces, including everything from spine poetry contests to how to critically evaluate websites and use databases. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, school libraries are incredibly safe spaces for students. For kids who are bullied, kids who don’t fit, kids who might struggle in any number of ways in this modern age, the library is often their haven.
The question, it seems, is who should be footing the bill.
The thing about this particular debate that strikes me is that this is, to my understanding, not a matter of money. The roughly $14 million in supplementary funding is not being reduced, so there is still ample coin in the coffers to maintain these services. I am also at a complete loss to understand how we ended up here in the first place. At what point along our educational journey did the government of Nova Scotia abscond its responsibility for keeping the library lights on?
Libraries, as a public entity, are experiencing a bit of a renaissance at the moment. They have expanded far beyond their original purpose as curators of the written word, and are, in all honesty, one of the few public entities that seem to be able to adapt to the current speed of societal change. At the exact same moment, libraries, as a public entity, are under attack with unprecedented ferocity. Indeed, just last fall an American documentary called The Librarians was released showcasing the extent to which libraries, and the people who staff them, have found themselves caught up in that country’s culture wars.
Considering the current state of the world, I can’t imagine a worse time to shutter an institution whose very existence is predicated on teaching kids how to tell fact from fiction.
If you wish to weigh in on the matter, contact your HRM councillor, or your local MLA.
frostededucation 