Baylee Smith gave notice to leave her job at the Autauga-Prattville Library on Monday. She wondered aloud what she could do with her free time.
“My first thought was I finally get to focus on potty training,” said the former children’s librarian with a laugh. As a single mom, Smith’s son is her singular focus, but she’s looking forward to “helping him through this big phase in his life.” Two former colleagues, Andrew Foster and Adrienne Barringer, laughed with her.
After nearly a year of book challenges and upheaval, the board of trustees made the dramatic decision to fire library director Andrew Foster last week, and then, after several employees protested, the board fired them, too.
The library opened Monday with shortened hours and fewer staff – and with dramatically reduced services. Among the fired staff members is Adrienne Barringer, who helped coordinate programming across the library system’s four branches.
Just hours after her firing, she and her husband needed to take her son to the emergency room. Since then, she’s gotten some rest, but said she’s still in “disbelief, sadness and grief and extreme anger that this was able to happen in the first place and nothing’s been changed.”
‘Starting from scratch’
In the last few months, Prattville has seen protests, heated board meetings and more than 100 books being reconsidered, most of which have LGBTQ characters.
When Foster started going through the list of books given to him by board chair Ray Boles, he questioned why some of the books, which had no sexual content or tenuous LGBTQ connections, were included.
Foster was fired for sharing emails regarding this list to a reporter and for recording meetings. In a recent interview with The Montgomery Advertiser, Boles denied wanting to remove LGBTQ books.
Monday, interim library director Tammy Bear directed all questions to the board. Board member Doug Darr said the process to review the 100 books will take time and could not give an estimate on how long it would take.
The board also needs new members to replace people who left recently. It’s not clear who may be candidates, but Prattville resident Rev. Ell White II applied for an open board seat about two months ago. He hasn’t gotten any notification from the current board about the application, even though the city clerk acknowledged the application was received. White is also a onetime candidate for a local school board.
The three former library staff gathered in a park a block away from the main branch to discuss their next steps and concerns about the library’s future. Among personal uncertainties, they wonder: Who will manage this year’s summer reading program, which has previously served more than 1,000 students? Who will work with the 700 children who, last month, participated in about 20 programs?
“It’s very hard to have hope right now, because they would have to completely scrap and then start back,” Smith said.
“All that momentum, all the continuity, everything, whenever things start up, it’s going to be starting from scratch,” former executive director Foster said. “I think it’s going to almost certainly be years before the library can recover to anything close to where it’s at.”
The morning started a bit somber for Foster, who carried a small cardboard box of his belongings out of the main branch’s back office. Board member Doug Darr confirmed Foster would not be allowed back into the library for an undetermined time.
Barringer and former library associate Luke Rollins, who was also fired last week, said they have yet to be offered their jobs back despite recent reports that they were asked to return.
When the library board voted to remove Foster last Thursday, Barringer, the former youth services program assistant, tearfully announced the library would be closed until further notice. She said the staff was upset and needed time to determine the next steps.
“The staff very quickly convened to decide to close the library in protest of the firing,” she told AL.com on Friday. “We were all so blindsided. This has just been an emotional rollercoaster. We needed time to process on how exactly we’re going to move forward.”
Foster said he’s taken time to “rest and reset” and was glad to have a visit from his sister and her family. He doesn’t have to “worry about taking enough time to see them. I can just go see them whenever.”
Foster said he looks back and recognizes how stressful things have been.
“Even with the changes that have happened with me losing my job and all the stresses that come with that, I think I’m just kind of at a place of peace now.”
Librarians are “very quiet, meek individuals,” Barringer said. “They don’t like confrontation.”
Now, she said librarians are angry and bold while still trying to remain peaceful and neutral.
“It feels like we’re actually in a book right now,” Barringer said. She will do what she can to ensure every community member’s “voice is heard no matter what.”
Smith said she wants “to use my voice to defend all libraries in the state of Alabama.”
Smith is concerned about people bullying librarians. She’s both angry and terrified about the state of libraries. “These ignorant bullies are going to come for them, and they need to protect themselves from the inside so they can’t get in. So I’m doing what I can and using my resources to figure out the best way to approach that.”
Rollins told AL.com things have been hectic, but he’s “been running around trying to get the word out as much as possible, trying to tell people what’s going on.”
He attended a Saturday protest before the library board appointed an interim director. And he is looking for other work.
Smith said she felt she couldn’t speak before but is ready to protect libraries.
“Now I am going to scream at the top of my lungs for the people who can’t say anything,” Smith said. “Because, yes, they are attacking LGBTQ people. They’re also attacking librarians.”