Darrell Greer
Northern News Services

RANKIN INLET (Feb 24/99) - Funding choices, classification and limited financial resources are why the John Ayaruaq library located in Manni Uluyuk school in Rankin Inlet cannot be accessed by students during regular school hours.

A meeting was held this past Monday night between local District Education Authority (DEA) members and the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to try and resolve the issue.

Brian Zawadski, DEA board member, says it makes no sense that students can't access a library located in their own school. The library is open nine hours during week days (Mon.-Wed. 5:30-8:30 p.m.), and three hours on weekends (Sat. noon-3 p.m.).

"One issue raised is that it's a fairly complicated system to ensure books get put back where they belong so that when you want to find a book, it doesn't take you two or three hours looking on a shelf. Another was control over things like damage, pilferage or loss," says Zawadski.

"We're told you have to have a qualified librarian in there during open hours, but why it can't be open to have students able to access it during school hours is not entirely clear to me. I haven't seen the definition of public hours, but I understand working people would have to go in after five or during lunch."

Zawadski says it seems reasonable for there to be some overlap between times both the average working person and students can access the library. He says one scenario would be to have it open just after afternoon classes, so students with homework can go right to the library and not have to go outside.

"I believe we came up with a compromise. We talked about shifting the hours so there would be access for students shortly after school and they wouldn't have to go home and then come back," says Zawadski.

"We have to lobby our new MLAs for adequate funding and resolve who is responsible for what, so we can negotiate something more reasonable. There is a librarian in town we can hire, so it's an issue of money and a jurisdictional thing between DEA and (the department)."

The department's regional superintendent Helene Fairbanks says the library is a community library, not a school library. She says until a few years ago, it was a regional library which supplied services to other communities and, at that time, employed a full-time librarian who was available to help oversee third-party funding.

Fairbanks says the library is mandated to have public hours -- hours it is accessible to those who work -- and is not funded to be a school library.

"I don't know if the board has funding available for school system libraries," says Fairbanks.

"We've provided a bit of assistance before when we had a regular librarian, but without someone there to monitor things full time, being open through the school day is just an impossibility."

Curtis Brown, director of the Kivalliq Divisional Education Council, says funding comes from the Department of Education in Yellowknife, using a formula based on student numbers, and individual schools set their budgets as to what they see as priorities in the community.

"My understanding is the school is satisfied with the level of accessibility it has to that library. As to how funding is utilized, or any jurisdictional questions, the local DEA makes funding choices in consultation with the hamlet's principals. It's pretty easy to decide what goes to which school because it's based on student numbers," said Brown.

"There's nothing extra budgeted to the board for libraries in any community. During the past couple of years, the funding amounts to the DEAs have increased because of the council's decision to maximize that funding, despite territorial contributions to the divisional board having decreased."