Trustees of the Maplewood (N.J.) Memorial Library met with Mayor Fred Profeta in an emergency meeting January 14 to reexamine their December decision to close the library weekday afternoons because of disruptive middle-school students—a policy that would have gone into effect two days later. Library Director Jane Kennedy told American Libraries that the “the board voted to rescind its decision about changing library hours” and the township offered some “funding for the library to develop new after-school programs.” The board’s unanimous vote will keep the main and Hilton branch libraries open between 2:45 and 5:00 p.m.

“We can do what Maplewood does best,” Profeta said at the meeting, “in a pragmatic way.” Shortly after the vote, trustee President Marianna Noto commented, “The squeaky wheel gets the what? Grease. And we squeaked a lot,” the January 15 Newark Star-Ledger reported.

Profeta announced that he had at his disposal $170,000 from the state’s Family Connections program and potentially $50,000 in proceeds from the Mayor’s Ball fundraiser in April. Declaring 2007 to be the “Year of the Middle School” in Maplewood, the mayor said that new after-school programs could be rolled out in days.

The board was less excited about the township’s offer to provide “nonthreatening safety supervisors” who would wear blazers and dress shirts rather than security-guard uniforms, and it deferred the issue for later discussion. “I have real issues about using security guards as our first line of defense against 11- and 12-year-olds,” board Vice-President Karen Pettis said in the Star-Ledger.

Posted January 15, 2007.