Penhold library board clears the air on agreement with Chinook’s Edge School Division

—

According to Russell, the library is closed on Mondays, limiting the days students can access its resources. He said the library board has only been willing to offer Monday services if it receives additional funding, which the division isn’t in a position to provide.

When the partnership began in 2014, CESD was providing the library with about $35,000 in funding, including a $30,000 library service fee, $3,500 collection development fee and just over $2,000 in library card fees. This agreement included Monday services, according to records provided by the library board.

The agreement changed for 2020-2021. Penhold Crossing opted to provide its own staff to the Learning Commons to cover Mondays, reducing the library service fee by half to $15,000. The library board requires its own staff members to be present while the library operates, however, so a service fee to supplement the wage of the employee that would still need to be present was introduced instead. This new fee was charged at $180 per day for 35 days, bringing the total funding for the year to about $24,500.

“It’s just the issue that we can’t have the library open to students without having a representative or a staff member from the library there,” Filipchuk explained.

The next major change came at the end of the 2023 school year, Filipchuk said, when the acting principal requested Monday services be terminated.

“[The division] said in a letter to parents that our high school students have the least access to the library in the division at only 60 per cent access — they don’t have access on Mondays. If that is factual information, then that is by their design because they cut those Mondays and cut the funding for Mondays, and the library obliged,” she commented.

Russell maintained that funding request from the library was no longer feasible for CESD.

“Our assertion is we were already paying a significant fee for service to be provided and then they wanted fees on top of that,” he said on behalf of the division.

The change brought the amount given to the library board for 2024-2025 down to about $20,000.

The board’s treasurer confirmed that while losing this funding would be a disappointment, funding from CESD was dedicated to serving CESD students and not used for library operations outside the agreement.

Filipchuk claimed the access challenges have not been brought up in the two official negotiation sessions that have occurred regarding terminating the agreement. Russell said the issue is long-standing and well-known, but could not confirm whether CESD brought it up in the context of the current negotiations.

The library board also mentioned it tried to inform parents of the situation by requesting to speak at parent council meetings, which the division denied. Russell said this was because it goes against division practice to discuss third-party agreements in that setting.

From the perspective of the library board, CESD’s move to end the agreement is a detriment to students and will actually make access worse due to the difference in resources available.

Data collected over the 2023-24 school year indicates students accessed a collection of more than 17,000 items valued at $386,331 from the Penhold library. Through that library, students also have access to the entire Parkland Regional Library System’s collection, which Filipchuk said is valued at over $19.5 million.

The division plans to stock and utilize its own library within Penhold Crossing Secondary School, as well as the new middle school expected to open this fall, instead. Russell said to accomplish this, $20,000 has been allocated to increase existing resources at Penhold Crossing, while $40,000 is also earmarked for books at Penhold Elementary School. This school will be moving into the new middle school once it’s opened.

With $60,000 total allocated for new books between the two schools, Russell added, students will also have access to CESD’s entire network of library resources, valued at approximately $5-6 million.

In addition to being the library board’s treasurer, Filipchuk is a parent to a Penhold Elementary School student, a Jessie Duncan Elementary School student and a recent graduate of Penhold Crossing.

As a parent, she said she worries her younger children won’t have the same access to resources as her child that’s graduated. She expressed concern as to how the division’s new approach is a better return on investment, compared to the existing set up.

The division asserts that access will improve as the resources will be available during all hours the school is open, rather than just Tuesday to Friday.

At the end of the day, both parties said they want what’s best for students.

Filipchuk added, “We want this partnership; we want the students in the library. We want to be able to create those connections and provide the resources to them.”

Officials with the Town of Penhold, which owns the building the library leases, declined to comment on the situation.

by Ashley Lavallee-Koenig

Penhold library board clears the air on agreement with Chinook’s Edge School Division

What's Trending