Several Seattle students, parents and staff members have protested the cuts at recent school board meetings, sharing personal anecdotes about the positive socioemotional impact of having access to library services. A considerable body of research has linked school libraries to higher literacy, academic performance and graduation rates — all of which help reduce achievement and opportunity gaps for historically marginalized students.

The state funds 68 librarian positions in Seattle schools, although eight are currently unfilled. That money contributes to about 60% of librarian pay in the district. Local levies, grants and parent-teacher association money generate the rest of their salaries.

Lee Micklin of Cleveland STEM High School, center right, and colleagues talk with state Sen. Reuven Carlyle during a group lobbying effort at Carlyle's Olympia office, April 2, 2019.

The librarian cuts are projected to eliminate $1.7 million of the district’s shortfall, according to a recent SPS budget report . Some of the affected schools, such as Hamilton International Middle School, expect to fill the gaps with PTA revenue and discretionary funds — the latter of which are dictated by enrollment. PTA money, on the other hand, tends to be more abundant for schools in wealthier communities.

But Craig Seasholes, a Dearborn Park International Elementary School teacher-librarian and former Washington Library Association president, said the district isn’t tapping all of its resources. He pointed out that librarians actually help their schools bring in funding through avenues like grants and book fairs.

“There are a lot of foundations in this town that can write a [$1.7 million] check,” Seasholes said. “Librarians grow the pie and that message gets lost in the cuts.”

The Legislature awarded school districts more money toward educator pay in response to the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling in the landmark McCleary v. Washington case. The Seattle Education Association negotiated what amounted to an approximately $20,000 base pay raise for most full-time librarians in Seattle Public Schools.

Although the district used a $45 million budget surplus in September to help cover the raises, some warned layoffs could be imminent if the Legislature did not increase state funding allocations or roll back its limits on local levy collecting authority.

Seasholes said he would have been content if the Seattle Education Association (SEA), the union that represents Seattle educators, had accepted a lower salary offer until a means of sustaining the pay raises was more apparent. But that’s not to say that he doesn’t support prioritizing better compensation for librarians.

“The dollar cost of a librarian is quite low if you look at how many roles a librarian serves,” he said. “It's not that we're expensive book dispensers … but if you have an instructional leader, an information technology leader, a reading advocate and a professional development provider, then actually we have a very good deal.”

Seasholes also expressed disappointment that requests for full-time librarians at high-poverty schools didn’t make it past bargaining talks. Libraries are less likely to contain resources such as modern books, updated technology and even librarians themselves if they're in schools with higher concentrations of students living in poverty than if they serve those with more affluent populations, according to a 2011 study in The Library Quarterly journal.

Both House and Senate Democrats have introduced bills this legislative session that would expand local levy authority, which lawmakers previously lowered to keep property-rich cities like Seattle from perpetuating educational inequities for less wealthy Washington districts.

Senate Bill 5313, which was passed through the Senate Ways and Means Committee April 3, would allow school districts serving fewer than 40,000 students to collect the lesser of $2.50 per $1,000 of assessed home value or $2,500 per pupil. Districts serving 40,000 or more students would be authorized to collect the lesser of the same assessed value formula or $3,000 per pupil. The levy cap would be adjusted each year for inflation beginning in 2020.

House Bill 2140, on the other hand, would raise levy-collecting authority to 20 percent of local funds, or the lesser of $3,000 per pupil or a tax rate of $1.50 per $1,000 of assessed value. A group of more than 20 Seattle Public Schools librarians and supporters traveled to Olympia this week to urge lawmakers, including Sens. Rebecca Saldaña and Reuven Carlyle, both Democrats representing Seattle, to vote in favor of increasing local levy authority — a move the librarians say is necessary to address dire short-term needs.

“The importance isn’t our positions,” Seasholes told Saldaña during a group meeting in her Olympia office on Tuesday. “It’s the students’ learning opportunities.”

The librarians also asked that the Legislature reconsider how the many facets of a librarian’s work could be factored into the funding it allocates for other services, such as special education and technology programs.

Sen. Reuven Carlyle speaks with Seattle Public Schools librarians in Olympia, April 2, 2019.

Carlyle asserted that although he doesn’t think McCleary funding reforms solved every school funding issue, the Legislature gave Seattle Public Schools a year to move away from local tax levies and align its spending with new state requirements. He maintains that the district is mostly confronting a self-inflicted structural deficit.

“We have an era of a top-down, state-centric model,” he said. “And that means that 85%-plus of the money comes from Olympia. This is the new normal.”