It’s Banned Book Week, and New York City is experiencing increasing efforts to limit free speech and ban books. In response to this threat, the Legislature passed The Freedom to Read Act in June, aiming to safeguard school libraries and librarians from book bans. In a time marked by Project 2025, Moms for Liberty, and censorship, this legislation is an important stand.

Nevertheless, we must tackle the entire problem. It’s crucial to protect and prioritize school libraries, the places where student reading freedom thrives.

Approximately 40% of book challenges occur in school libraries. This is not coincidental, as they are central to our students and society. Before Project 2025, New York City had already significantly reduced its public-school libraries and librarians.

In 2021, my children’s school lost their librarian and her enriching programs. I began collaborating with other parents and discovered an alarming citywide decline in school librarians, prompting the formation of Librarians = Literacy to advocate for the return of school librarians for all NYC public school students.

Despite living in a progressive city, most New Yorkers we encounter — parents, community members, elected officials, and education policymakers — assert support for school libraries, intellectual freedom, and opposition to censorship. Yet, school librarians and libraries have been undervalued and cut as budget casualties.

In 2005, nearly 1,500 librarians served the almost 1,600 NYC public schools, but by 2023, that number had fallen to about 260. Current data is scarce, as Mayor Adams’ Department of Education has been reluctant to confirm these numbers, even when queried by elected officials.

What we’ve lost is much more than books. School libraries have a tremendous data-backed impact on student success, and school library programs — which go way beyond checking out books — can’t function properly without highly-trained pedagogues. The presence of a certified librarian in a school is proven to increase schoolwide literacy, test scores, media literacy, research skills, college preparedness, graduation rates, and more.

Now, in an era of censorship and misinformation, school librarians are more important than ever. They are on the frontlines of safeguarding our students’ learning and liberties. They curate diverse collections allowing all school children to feel seen and valued. They teach students how to find factual information and that not everything that they read online is true.

While our public libraries are amazing institutions, not all kids use them. A school library is many students’ best — often only — chance to interact with a comprehensive collection of free books and media. Unsurprisingly, school librarian and library loss is affecting high-poverty schools in our city at significantly higher rates.

Lack of access to a functioning school library run by a trained pedagogue is another form of book banning. One could argue a more significant form, affecting all of the books and all of the students in entire schools and sometimes neighborhoods. If we’re serious about standing up to censorship and making our city and schools bastions of intellectual freedom and equity we must invest in literacy, intellectual freedom, and support for our most vulnerable students.

To truly safeguard our students’ freedom to read, we must protect places where it flourishes: school libraries.

The first step is to publicly acknowledge the rampant school librarian and library loss. In May, Librarians = Literacy and our allies worked with school librarian champions in the City Council to pass “The Librarians Count Law,” requiring the DOE to report data on school librarians and libraries. But we must go further.

We’re urgently calling on Gov. Hochul to sign the Freedom to Read Act into law. But we also need to fund the existing state mandates for school libraries and librarians and expand upon them to include librarians (not just library spaces) in elementary schools.

We must ensure that the next mayor of New York will be a champion for school libraries and work to find real solutions to school librarian loss. In the coming years, we hope that every New York public school student will be marking Banned Books Week with their school librarian, secure in the knowledge that we have protected their freedom to read.

Fox is a mom to two NYC public schools students, a children’s book author, and the co-founder of Librarians = Literacy, a campaign for certified librarians and libraries in all NYC public schools.