| TO: | Honorable Rob Eissler, Chair, House Committee on Public Education |
| FROM: | John S O'Brien, Director, Legislative Budget Board |
| IN RE: | HB1505 by Munoz, Jr. (Relating to librarians employed by school districts.), As Introduced |
The bill would require school districts that have no campuses enrolling at least 500 students to provide the services of a librarian to elementary school students to the extent practicable. The bill would specify three alternatives for districts to meet the requirement including employing a part-time certified librarian, employing a part-time teacher who is also certified as a librarian, or entering into a shared services arrangement with one or more school districts to share a certified librarian. An analysis of campus enrollment and staffing data for the 2010-11 school year indicates that a total of 593 school districts have no campus enrolling at least 500 students and would be subject to these requirements under the bill. Of these districts, the data suggest that 459 do not meet the bill's requirement and would need to take action to comply. For the purpose of this estimate, it was assumed that employment of 0.25 FTE per elementary campus in each of these districts would meet the requirements of the bill. Based on this assumption, the affected districts would need to employ 134 additional FTE librarians in aggregate. Based on the reported average salary of a librarian for the 2010-11 school year of $55,342, the cost to comply with the bill's requirements on a statewide basis would be $7,415,828. Costs for individual districts would vary from $13,836 to $55,342.
School districts with at least one campus enrolling 500 or more students would be authorized but not required to employ a certified librarian for each elementary school in the district. On an alternate basis, the bill would authorize such districts to employ on average districtwide at least one certified librarian for every 500 elementary school students. An analysis of campus enrollment and staffing data for the 2010-11 school year indicate that a total of 436 school districts have at least one campus enrolling 500 or more students. Of these districts, 309 neither have one full-time librarian reported at each elementary campus nor meet the districtwide average of one librarian FTE per each 500 elementary school students. If each of the 309 school districts chose to comply with the provisions of the bill by meeting the lower of either the requirement for one FTE per campus or the requirement for a 1:500 districtwide average, a total of 882 additional librarian FTEs would be needed. Associated salary costs would approach $49.0 million on a statewide basis. Costs for individual districts would vary widely. More than one-third of affected districts would need to employ only one additional FTE or partial FTE to meet the bill's requirements and would experience costs of $55,342 or less.
| Source Agencies: | 701 Central Education Agency
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| LBB Staff: | JOB, LXH, JGM, JSp
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