The Vermont School Library Association is objecting to part of Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger’s proposal to build the city’s new high school on the downtown Gateway Block.
The association takes issue with part of Weinberger’s recommendation that the city’s Fletcher Free Library could integrate with Burlington High School if the new school is built on the block adjacent to the community library and Memorial Auditorium. That plan would mean the school wouldn’t have to build its own library, the mayor has suggested.
The association sent a letter to the Burlington School District and school board members, making it clear that it “strongly rejects” Weinberger’s proposal. Conjoining the public library with the new high school would take away resources from both students and residents, the association argued.
“While the Fletcher Free Library is a dynamic space that serves as a key community resource, public and school libraries serve very different purposes,” the letter stated.
The Burlington School District is in the midst of identifying where to build its new high school. The former building was shut down last fall when cancer-causing PCB chemicals were found throughout the grounds. Two areas are in the running: an area around 52 Institute Road, where the former high school is located, that includes two site possibilities, or the Gateway Block, an area where the mayor has long favored development.
The district has hired White + Burke Real Estate to assess both sites and deliver details to the board next month. The board is expected to choose a final site by November.
The library association’s letter also alleges that the Burlington High School library has been underfunded compared with nearby schools’ libraries.
“As a district that has been negatively and disproportionately impacted by Vermont’s inequitable and racist school funding formula, it is not in Burlington’s best interest to deprive teenage students of their own school library,” the letter stated.
The statement refers to research that found the state’s education funding formulas to be outdated and inequitable, specifically for districts such as Burlington that have high levels of English language learners and low-income students who need significant support.
Russ Elek, a spokesperson for the Burlington School District, told VTDigger in an email Monday that the district appreciates the considerable feedback it has received about the placement of the new high school, including from the state library association.
“We are considering all of this feedback seriously and will do the same with VSLA’s recommendation,” Elek wrote. “In the meantime, BSD remains committed to providing our students with thriving school libraries that encourage literacy and provide safe spaces for all.”
In a statement to VTDigger Monday, Weinberger said he wished state library association leaders had contacted his office directly to discuss their concerns. He said he discussed the possibility of conjoining the Fletcher Free Library with its director, Mary Danko, and they agreed to bring the idea to the district.
“We are in an era in which a growing number of cities are innovating, designing, and building new schools that serve both students and the community around them,” Weinberger said.
“As the city and its taxpayers confront limited borrowing capacity, and while both the city and the school district have significant capital needs, we feel it is our responsibility to consider whether such an innovative and collaborative approach is possible,” he added.
Peter Langella, a former president of the school library association and its current legislative concerns representative, told VTDigger on Monday that the association published its letter because some thought the mayor had proposed this idea without consulting enough librarians.
“We heard from people on the ground in school libraries and public libraries that no one had been consulted,” he said. The statement aimed to give “people who are directly involved a voice at the table,” Langella said.
Langella said the school library association has found that nearby schools in Essex, South Burlington and his own Champlain Valley Union High School, where he works as a librarian, have more support staff in their libraries than Burlington does. On top of the funding pressures Burlington experiences relative to its student population, splitting an essential resource like a public library between students and the community creates more inequities, Langella said.
He reiterated the association’s viewpoint that public and school libraries serve different needs. While the Burlington High School library is facilitating conversations about social justice and enhancing literacy skills, the Fletcher Free Library can help people to apply for jobs, access the internet or “have a warm place to be if they’re experiencing homelessness,” Langella said.
“The Fletcher Free Library is designed to be a community resource,” Langella said, “not a high school library.”
Correction: This original version of this story misidentified the name of the library group that objected to an element of a proposed new high school in downtown Burlington. It is the Vermont School Library Association.
