GILROY
– One group of Gilroy parents saved their school librarian from
becoming the next victim of state education cuts.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – One group of Gilroy parents saved their school librarian from becoming the next victim of state education cuts.
Thanks to the Luigi Aprea Elementary School parent club, Monica Thomas will keep her part-time position, which the school was going to cut at the beginning of the school year.
Principal Sergio Montenegro said that after mid-year budget cuts in 2002-03, the school simply did not have enough money to keep a librarian on staff this year.
“Like every other school across the state of California, we’ve been hit by budget cuts,” Montenegro said. “Based on our budget, we had no choice but to cut our librarian.”
The parent club stepped in and said it would use money from school fund raisers to cover Thomas’ $14,000 gross pay. The club was already covering about $7,000 of Thomas’ pay since 2001 to extend her hours from 10 each week to 20.
“I tip my hat off to them, it’s a wonderful parent club,” Montenegro said. “I really am grateful to the parent club that we have, they’re wonderful problem-solvers.”
Parents of Luigi Aprea students are among the most involved in the district.
“They’re great about all this,” Thomas said. “They are a very active parent club. All it took was a few parents … and the community has really chipped in and done their share.”
Paying to keep Thomas on staff seemed a natural decision for the parent club.
“(Former parents) were very adamant about keeping
a lib-rarian,” Pres-ident Ernes-tina Moitoso said. “We’re just following through, keeping it going, making sure we have one.”
Luigi Aprea’s major fund raisers last year included a cookie-dough sale and a barbecue in May.
“We’re really lucky to have a school where parents really support our fund raisers and a lot of events aren’t promoted as fund raisers, but we do make a lot of extra money,” Moitoso said.
Thomas sees about 25 classes at least once every two weeks. They come in for half-hour sessions, younger students to hear Thomas read a story and older students to check out books for projects. Thomas also helps students check out books for recreational reading, orders new books and meets with teachers during her 20-hour work week.
“My first and most important goal that I try to achieve here at school is to make the library a welcoming environment so that kids and parents can come in here and feel welcome checking out books,” Thomas said.
Thomas organized the library to reflect the set-up of the Gilroy Public Library, so students will know how to locate the books they want.
“She is doing a bang-up job for us,” Montenegro said, “She definitely has upgraded our library.”
The Luigi Aprea parent club also just paid half the cost – splitting the price with Gilroy Unified School District – to purchase a shade area to cover the students’ outdoor lunch tables.
