Grossmont District’s high schools experience first semester without teacher librarians

“They meant to hurt us, but they’re hurting our kids.” –Jason Balisteri, Mount Miguel history teacher and former teacher-librarian

By Armando Rasing II

Photos, left:  protest signs at GUHSD board meeting when the majority voted to fire all teacher-librarians.

November 25, 2025 (San Diego’s East County) - The 2025-26 school year marks the first school year that the Grossmont Union High School District doesn’t have a teacher-librarian for any of its nine schools, following mass layoffs. 

The GUHSD board held an emergency board meeting last February to vote on whether they should keep or lay off 49 credentialed teachers. Despite almost 600 students and parents in attendance to support the teachers, the board voted 4-1 to eliminate them, including all nine district librarians

“I was at the board meeting where they made the official decision,” said Monte Vista English teacher and former teacher-librarian Nicole SaBell-Stoltz (photo, right, by Armando Rasing II). “It was absolutely devastating.”

A teacher-librarian, also known as a school librarian, is someone who is certified to manage a school library while also having training in teaching. Teacher-librarians are trained to instruct, supervise and develop students, along with having the skills and responsibility to manage a library. 

While some workers eventually got their jobs back, the teacher-librarian position has remained eliminated. The teacher-librarians finished their roles as librarians until the end of the 2024-25 school year, before being moved to full-time teaching positions this school year.

Valhalla English teacher and former teacher-librarian Stephanie Macceca said that she was told by her union president that librarians were going to be laid off and that she had anticipated the move for over a year.

“I was hurt, but I was not surprised,” Macceca said. “We were actively working to try to save jobs and to point out what was going wrong in the school district and point out bad decision making by the part of the board, and we knew that we would be targeted as a result.”

The board has not elaborated on the reason for its decision. 

“This year, when I got back to school, I needed to go into the library, like I literally couldn’t step foot in (the library),” Macceca said. “It was so painful because I had transformed it.”

The library is ‘the heartbeat of any school’

Students take the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress every year for evaluation of their reading proficiency. GUHSD had a 13% proficiency rating in the 2024-25 school year, meaning that 13% of their students were “well developed” with English language proficiency.

“Third and fifth grade (reading level) is considered functional illiteracy,” Macceca, who specializes in teaching English learners, said. “The freshmen that I’m teaching right now are functionally illiterate.”

Almost 42% of their students were at the lowest proficiency level. The state of California altogether had above a 15% proficiency rating, with only 23.65% of students at the lowest proficiency level. 

“Schools with a librarian, the literacy rates are much higher,” said Granite Hills English teacher and former teacher-librarian Angela Scott. “When you have a dedicated librarian whose job it is to connect with books, that’s all the difference.”

Photos, right: screenshots from GUHSD board meeting Feb. 27, when trustees voted 4-1 for the mass firings despite objections from a large crowd of parents, teachers and students.

Teacher-librarians were not only in charge of managing books in the library, but also supervising and helping students, providing book suggestions and more. 

“The library is like the heartbeat of any school,” SaBell-Stoltz said. “I would work through lunch because that was the busiest time of the day. I’d get 70-to-80 plus kids coming in, playing games, talking to each other, getting out of the heat.”

The position is now replaced with “library technicians,” who used to be the librarian’s assistant and are now in charge of managing the library, without the responsibility of supervising students or having extensive literary knowledge. 

“I just think it’s really unethical for the school district to pay (library technicians) so significantly less to do the work that we did,” Macceca said. “They’re not trained to do what they’re doing. They’re just making do with what they can do.”

Libraries are now required to be closed during lunch and after school because library technicians do not have the requirements necessary to legally supervise students.

Photo, left: library at Monte Vista High School, via GUHSD website

“We are certified teachers,” said Mount Miguel history teacher and former teacher-librarian Jason Balisteri. “Classified people cannot supervise kids. So the library, theoretically, should be closed throughout the entire school day. Students are stuck on campus after dark. They’re sitting there waiting for a ride because they did their sports activity, or they’re waiting for their sports activity to start. They have no place to go. Everything’s locked.”

“Because I’m a credentialed teacher, students are allowed to be in a library with me there at all times,” SaBell-Stoltz said.  “But students are not able to be in the library with the library tech unless a teacher is with them. So you have to be a credentialed, certified librarian in order for students to be in there.”

Households within the GUHSD district (workers and students) have an average of  $41,883 per capita income, which is below the average of $51,564 in San Diego County, according to the 2023 American Community Survey census. Approximately 15% of students within the district live below the poverty line compared to the 11% average across San Diego County. 

“And then (in) a low-income area like our schools, there’s a lot of kids still chilling (after school), right?” Balisteri said. “But now they can’t go to the library and it’s raining outside. My board members kept my kids outside in the rain, sitting on concrete.”

Bigger than books

There are more than 1,500 emails and counting that have been sent to the district office in support of rescinding the board’s decision. There were approximately 600 people in attendance at the initial meeting to protest in favor of librarians.

“It reminds us, we do matter,” Scott said. “We are fighting the right fight. People care. They don’t want to be known as a community or an area that doesn’t have a librarian.”

There were 90 people who volunteered to speak in front of the board. Multiple speakers were members of the LGBTQ+ community, citing the library as a safe space for them. 

“I’ve advocated for LGBTQ students, particularly trans students, to have a bathroom that’s not in the nurse’s office where sick kids use the bathroom,” Macceca said. “And so my library bathroom became the bathroom for students who were vulnerable.”

Several of the schools in the GUHSD district have a large immigration population for both parents and students. For example, Valhalla High School has a predominantly Arab student population.

“I can’t tell you how many kids I helped with Social Security documents and or their parents with the kind of documents they need to complete for immigration for citizenship,” Macceca said. “We did all kinds of work like that for families, and I absolutely guarantee that’s not happening anymore.”

Macceca also said that librarians can provide further guidance for students that would be difficult for a teacher to give. She cited examples of helping students who were going through difficult times at home.

Photo, left:  empty classroom, by Armando Rasing II

“We saw the kids in between the classes and saw what they needed outside of their academics to support them, so that they felt more direction or felt validated in what they were doing or if they needed guidance,” Macceca said.

Controversy within the GUHSD board

There has been active tension between the local community and members of the GUHSD board. The board voted to not consider a resolution that would provide resources and training towards immigrant rights at last Thursday’s board meeting, to the dismay of dozens of protesters in attendance.

Following the decision to remove all librarians, the board has also faced accusations of committing Brown Act violations. Four of the board members - Scott Ekert, Jim Kelly, Robert Shield and Gary Woods - had their group text messages revealed by the San Diego Union-Tribune in June. A main focus of the text messages included reducing librarians to stop “woke” ideology. 

“The board wanted to hurt us,” Balisteri said. “They did, but they’re hurting the kids.”

As of the 2023-24 California Department of Education’s enrollment report, over 60% of GUHSD’s student population are people of color, with a large majority being Hispanic. 

“The students of our schools look a lot different than the people for the schools that they work for,” Balisteri said. “Robert Shield works for a private school. Scott Ekert worked for a private school. Gary Woods works for a bible student school and says he is for all religions, yet his own published writings say that all religions are not equal and is discriminatory against Islam.”

What now?

The nine GUHSD librarians who were fired, along with people from local communities, are still trying to get the decision reversed. For example, Balisteri has shown up to several board meetings since the decision, and there are still active petitions online that community members have put out. 

“I hope that we get our positions back and reinstated,” SaBell-Stoltz said. “To me, that is the only way to right this wrong.”

SaBell-Stoltz, Scott, Maccecca and Balisteri are all currently teachers. While they were all teachers before becoming a librarian, they emphasized that being a librarian is special and that is the job that they want.

“My favorite thing about (being a librarian was) that every student is my student, every teacher is my co-teacher as a librarian,” Balisteri said. “I could make eye contact with anybody and give them a fist bump. There’s power there. I’m telling you, that was so special.”

Scott admitted that while she enjoys being a teacher, losing her job as a librarian has caused sleepless nights for her. 

“I truly miss the connections,” Scott said. “It’s a different connection (between students and librarians). Being in the library, I have the opportunity to work with every single student in history.”

All four librarians said that they missed the conversations they used to share with students about books. Another thing all of them mentioned was that they enjoyed helping students become passionate about reading. 

“I think the thing I missed the most was sitting at my desk and watching students come (into) the library and decide, ‘I’m going to take that book,’” Macceca said. “And then they come in and they talk to me about it. And knowing that those micro experiences are what are developing them into these very advanced sophisticated thinkers.”

“I miss that a little bit,” she added. “Well, maybe I miss it a lot.”

This article was first written for Roman Koenig’s JMS 430 class at San Diego State University.