California budget cuts vital online resources for school libraries

from Carolyn JonesCalMatters

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California librarians were stunned when a last-minute budget change stripped K-12 schools of a range of research materials, potentially leaving thousands of students without resources to do reports, projects or homework.

Without notifying schools or librarians, the Legislature last week canceled $5.5 million that pays online fees for Encyclopedia Britannica, the New York Times, PBS videos such as Ken Burns documentaries, scholarly journals and thousands of other online materials used by students and teachers. The reduction takes effect on July 1, 2027.

“We had no idea this was coming,” said Greg Lucas, head of the California State Library, which helps oversee the program for California’s 10,000 public schools. “This will have a huge impact on students in California.”

The program called Compassis an online database of research and teaching materials vetted by teachers and librarians. Compass is also available through public libraries, but the majority of users are in K-12 schools. Since the program launched in 2018, it has received nearly 1 billion hits.

Students use Compass for classroom assignments as well as for entertainment. Many of the materials are available in multiple languages. Among the more popular features are National Geographic Kids; Pebble Go Science, which features hundreds of science activities from preschool through second grade; and Alexander Street, which offers videos of cultural performances such as the Joffrey Ballet and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Compass is especially important at a time when fewer schools have libraries — and librarians — to help students with research. Although nearly 90 percent of schools have physical space on campus for books, journals, and other research materials, only about a quarter of these spaces are staffed by librarians. The rest are staffed by volunteers, classified employees, or none at all. California ranks 49th nationally in terms of school librarian staffing, with nearly 10,000 students for every librarian, according to research from the Institute for Museum and Library Services.

Compass is available free of charge to all California schools. If schools were to subscribe individually to Compass materials, they would spend more than $216 million annually, according to State Library Report. A typical medium-sized school district can pay $100,000 or more for the services, an expense that lower-income districts are less likely to have the money for.

The loss of service raises concerns about Internet access

Without access to Compass materials, students would likely rely on free resources online. But these materials typically contain advertisements or track user data, a violation of state student privacy laws. They are also less likely to be checked for accuracy, a particular danger in the age of artificial intelligence.

“The loss of Compass is catastrophic for the state of California,” said Kate McMillan, library services coordinator for Napa Valley Unified. “This service is a lifeline. I can’t believe the Legislature would allow this to happen.”

Funding for Compass was in earlier versions of the budget the Legislature debated over the past few months. But the final version eliminates Compass funding after July 1, 2027. Instead, it directs $5 million of the funding to new state dyslexia screeningand $60,000 for technical support for an online lesson-sharing platform called California Educators Together.

Legislators and education budget committee staff members contacted by CalMatters would not comment on why the money was cut.

Meanwhile, librarians are launching an aggressive campaign to save the program. They are emailing Newsom and the Legislature and trying to bring attention to the issue.

Connie Williams, a retired school librarian and former head of the California School Library Association, said losing Compass would exacerbate disparities in the state’s education system. Lower-income schools would lose vital teaching resources, while higher-income schools would be able to pay their subscription costs themselves, without government assistance.

“The discrepancy will be extremely obvious,” Williams said. “We’re leaving students at the mercy of everything that’s free on the Internet.”

It’s especially troubling, she said, that the move comes as the state promotes media and digital literacy in schools. In 2023, California passed a law requiring schools to teach media literacy in all subjects, with an emphasis on teaching students to spot fake news, determine whether a source of information is reliable, and generally think critically about what they watch and read online.

“We want students to think critically, put their phones away, know how to do research,” Williams said. “And we’re grabbing some of the best training tools we have.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.