From left Jamestown Public Schools Board of Education President Paul Abbott, and Superintendent Dr. Kevin Whitaker listen to a presentation Tuesday. P-J photo by Michael Zabrodsky

The Jamestown Public Schools Board of Education is in the process of adding more library media specialists to help improve literacy for students in the district.

“Library media specialists play a very important role in this (literacy),” Superintendent Dr. Kevin Whitaker said.

During 2010 and 2011, JPS had some very challenging budget years where a number of positions were cut including library media specialists, which left the district’s elementary schools with fewer library media specialists, Whitaker said.

The superintendent added that there are full-time library media specialists at Jamestown High School, Washington, Jefferson and Persell Middle Schools.

“We have four elementary schools sharing two, so we want to bring back more so we can have our elementary schools have full-time (specialists),” Whitaker said.

And since the 2024-2025 budget was passed in May, the board can’t change the budget by adding a position.

“One of the things about changing positions midstream is that you can’t exceed the budget that the taxpayers have voted (for), so we can’t just add a position,” Whitaker said.

Board President Paul Abbott echoed Whitaker’s thoughts.

“With the understanding that you can’t, just, as he (Whitaker) said, because of the things we put out to our taxpayers, we can’t just make things happen immediately. It is a process, but it’s just something we wanted to explore, to try to remedy as soon as we possibly can,” Abbott said.

What the district has to do, Whitaker noted, is to look at other positions that exist, and which are not currently filled, and determine which ones might fit. After a determination is made about a position, change it from whatever the position was, into the library media specialist.

“One of the challenges we have is adding mid year, we have to make sure we stay within the approved budget amount that the community has approved. So in order to do that, we need to look at existing FTEs, meaning full time equivalent positions that are not filled, and which positions might be transferred from one role to another role, such as library media specialists, so that we could begin the hiring process to make that happen,” Whitaker said.

The superintendent added that he will next have conversations with other JPS officials regarding library media specialists.

A librarian has evolved into a library media specialist, Whitaker said, and is not a person that has a card catalog and leads students to books in the library.

“A library media specialist is what that position (librarian) has evolved into, and that is very much a teaching position. So that’s a person who can help students with reading, who can provide support for research projects, reading projects, book selection, and also (who can) give presentations in classrooms – so that role is very much a teaching role. So the transition of one FTE to another FTE from the teaching area makes sense,” Whitaker said.

In other business board members learned that JPS Transportation Supervisor John Spacht earned a New York State Master Instructor certificate.

“John is an incredibly talented guy and an unbelievably hard worker. He presented a solution, a proposal, to the New York State Transportation Board, and that earned him his master instructor certificate. And that rating is incredibly rare,” Whitaker said.

Spacht splits his time among the three school districts, working 40 percent of the time for Southwestern, 35 percent for Jamestown and 25 percent for Frewsburg.