Library director steps down after getting flack for...

...teaching English to legal immigrants.

On her own time, mind you.

With a grant that she applied for and was awarded by the government. 

Color me flabbergasted.

Comments

[Melissa]

My mind ... it is boggled. I can see it now:
"Them imgrunts need to speak English if they wanna come to this country!"
then
"What's that woman doing, teaching them imgrunts English on her own time! We don't pay her to teach English!" [duh]

And then blocking her from retrieving her own belongings. We truly can be a repugnant society at times.

[Dances With Books]

And the thing is you actually have people defending the library that gave her flack, using the "well, the grant money may not have been accounted for adequately" to cover themselves. In other words, bureaucratese for "finding an excuse to get rid of the troublemaker." From what little details were available, everything pretty much was kosher, so to speak.

This is repugnant indeed, but sadly, I am not surprised.

[Colleen]

I keep thinking things can not be as bad as they seem in this country and then I read something like this about someone doing good work to help people and being treated so horridly for it and I just want to crawl away and stop caring.

So bloody frustrating.

[Emily]

This is maddening on so many levels. What a backwards society we can be.

[patti]

That really makes me sick. Our library system has New Immigrant Centers located within our libraries and also informal english language programs that non-english speakers can join on a walk-in basis.