SAN ANTONIO — For Esther Uribe, books are always close by. 

“My mom and dad read books to me all the time when I was younger, but after dinner we would all go to the living room and we would take turns reading books to each other,” Uribe said. “So that love of reading started at home.”

She’s spent 24 years as an educator, 16 of them as a librarian. She currently works at Houston ISD, a district recently taken over by the Texas Education Agency and where the number of librarians is dwindling.

“I’m calling on the Board of Managers to take action to save our libraries," Uribe said. 

Houston ISD got rid of 28 librarians last year when the district converted many of its libraries into discipline centers. That was under the district's New Education System (NES), which is looking to add 45 more schools.

“Taking a place that is a sanctuary and making kids associate it with a place of punishment,” Uribe said. 

Across the state, librarians are losing their jobs. San Antonio ISD let go of nearly 30 librarians last year. Keller ISD, just north of Fort Worth, reduced its librarian staff by 50%. Houston ISD’s neighboring district, Spring Branch ISD, is cutting all librarian positions.

Daniel Liou is an associate professor at Arizona State University who recently presented at the Texas Library Association conference in San Antonio, where the concerns were felt across the board.

“Banning of librarians in addition to the banning of books is an eradication of specific knowledge pertaining to race, gender and sexuality,” Liou said. 

Liou, like Uribe, says libraries won’t be associated with learning. 

“Schools and libraries start to lose its status as a marketplace as a place for knowledge construction for people to develop their literacies,” Liou said. 

According to the U.S. Department of Education, children who have access to print materials have better literacy outcomes. 

SAISD cited low school budgets for its cuts, and because the district only has 28 full-time librarians, it told Spectrum News 1 it is currently recruiting certified librarians. HISD said it is trying to raise salaries for teachers. 

Both Daniel and Uribe believe that without libraries, access to needed materials will be limited.  

“Some school districts, they justify — ‘well, we are not going to close the library, we are going to put a clerk in so the kids can still have access to check books in and check books out,’” Uribe said. “Well, who is going to order the books?” 

Valuable assets, Uribe said, that go beyond the obvious. 

“Instructional coaches, information literacy teachers, we do so much that we are a district’s best bargain,” Uribe said.