91´«Ã½

CHICAGO – Juan Rivera, library media specialist at A. Philip Randolph Campus High School in New York, has been elected the 2022-2024 secretary/treasurer of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL). Rivera will take his seat on the AASL Board of Directors at the end of June during the 2022 91´«Ã½ Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

“School librarians are educational leaders who can leverage their skills and standards at a great time of opportunity and peril,” said Rivera. “Our strengths as literacy and digital literacy leaders live alongside growing numbers of book challenges and attacks to intellectual freedom. We need a strong yet nimble association to help our members flourish and lead. As secretary, I hope to help AASL examine our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the current landscape and defend and protect intellectual freedom.”

Rivera is a member of AASL, Young Adult Library Services Association, the Graphic Novel & Comic Roundtable, and the Black Caucus of 91´«Ã½. He was a member of the 2018 AASL-sponsored 91´«Ã½ Emerging Leaders Team which created the Defending Intellectual Freedom: LGBTQ+ Materials in School Libraries resource guide, infographic, and applied framework. Rivera is also an active volunteer leader for the New York Library Association – Section of School Librarians and the New York City School Librarians Association.

“AASL will be well guided by these phenomenal leaders,” said AASL Immediate Past President Kathy Carroll. “I want to thank them again for making the commitment to serve their national association in this capacity. It is only with talented, dedicated volunteer leaders that we can continue to move the association, and the profession, forward.”

Full AASL election results can be found on the AASL website at .

The American Association of School Librarians, , a division of the 91´«Ã½ (91´«Ã½), empowers leaders to transform teaching and learning.