Asheville school board faces pressure to protect librarian positions

Families could lose more than book checkout hours if Asheville City Schools trims librarian and media coordinator positions. At Asheville Middle School, Julie Noblitt said she already has to turn away requests she once covered, including chaperoning field trips, supervising students during testing and opening the library space during recess.

Those concerns dominated public comment at the April 20 Asheville City Board of Education meeting, where six of seven speakers urged board members to protect library staffing. Asheville City Schools has not finalized its next budget, but its proposed staffing formula for fiscal year 2026-27 includes one librarian per school, a figure that supporters said does not match the workload many libraries now carry.

Over the last five years, the district has reduced librarian roles from 24 positions to 15.5. That decline, along with the loss of a media coordinator at William Randolph School last year and the consolidation of digital learning technician roles into a smaller group of districtwide coaches, has pushed more responsibilities onto remaining librarians and media coordinators. Baily Griffith, a media coordinator at Claxton Elementary, told board members that staff feel squeezed from all sides. Jackson Schall, a library assistant at Asheville High School, said the school library has been life changing for students.

The staffing fight is also about what schools lose when librarians are stretched thin. North Carolina Department of Public Instruction says school library media coordinators are licensed teachers who are central to school literacy culture and help students build digital literacy skills through technology-enhanced learning. Buncombe County Schools says each media center is staffed with a trained School Library Media Coordinator, with assistants in some schools, underscoring how much daily instruction and student support can depend on the role.

The budget pressure comes after another year of tight fiscal choices. In April 2025, the Asheville City School Board passed a 7-0 no-cuts budget worth $21.8 million. A separate 2025 budget proposal sought $36.4 million and an additional $2.45 million from Buncombe County commissioners to hold funding steady without staffing cuts. Asheville’s city school tax rate for fiscal year 2025-26 was 11.00 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, a reminder that every staffing decision is tied to broader city and county budget tradeoffs.

Superintendent Maggie Fehrman said decisions about librarian staffing ultimately rest with principals and whether those positions are included in enhancement requests. For now, the question is whether Asheville’s library reductions are a temporary squeeze or part of a structural shift that will leave fewer adults supporting reading, research and daily school life across the district.