Last year, the Perry School District had a sharing agreement for a certified school librarian with the Woodward-Granger School District.

The librarian was under contract with Perry, spending 193 days in Perry and 12 days at Woodward-Granger. This year the sharing agreement will continue, but the script has been flipped. Perry will have the services of a certified librarian for only 12 days this coming school year, though Superintendent Clark Wicks says the librarian associates in the district are up to the challenge. Perry did look into hiring a full-time librarian, but wasn’t comfortable with any of the candidates. Because of that, sharing with another school was the best option.

Wicks explains, “It isn’t ideal. We’re going to have to make due with what we have. And the reason is, they went through an extensive process in trying to attract a certified school librarian. It’s a sign of the times. There’s very, very few that are out there, and therefore, we’re going to go into a sharing agreement. Fortunately we have really good librarian associates that will be in serving the kids in that capacity. The bottom line is we’re meeting the requirements of the state law, and now we just need to focus in on meeting the needs of the kids that way.”

The Perry School Board approved the sharing agreement at their meeting earlier this month, and Wicks will be reaching out to the Woodward-Granger superintendent in the coming weeks to discuss a schedule for the shared librarian. The good news with this scenario is the district will spend considerably less money on librarian services for the upcoming school year.

To hear more about this and other school board topics, listen to Tuesday’s Perry Fareway Let’s Talk Dallas County program at RaccoonValleyRadio.com.