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Yuma County to end library agreements with two elementary schools, leaving materials with districts
Summary
The Yuma County Board of Supervisors on March 2 authorized the county library director to terminate intergovernmental agreements with Hyder (Dateland) and Mohawk Valley elementary schools and to relinquish library materials to the districts, effective July 1, 2026.
Ashley Jones, the library director for the Yuma County Free Library District, asked the board to authorize termination of intergovernmental agreements with Hyder (Dateland) Elementary and Mohawk Valley Elementary and to relinquish library materials currently housed at those schools to the school districts.
"What we're requesting at this time is to terminate those agreements and, in the same scope, leave all of the material that is housed at those facilities at the schools and relinquish that material to those school districts," Jones told the board, saying the school-based collections no longer function as public libraries.
Jones said the library changed its operating model in 2022, removed library employees from those school sites and instead funded a school employee to oversee the collections. She said the schools now require front-office check-in and appointment-only access, limiting public use. Jones said the district is pursuing a five-year plan that may include purchasing property or deploying a mobile unit to better serve growing East County communities and is exploring expansion at the Foothills library site, subject to existing ADOT restrictions on adjacent county-owned property.
The board voted to authorize the director to terminate the intergovernmental agreement with Hyder Elementary (effective July 1, 2026), to terminate the agreement with Mohawk Valley Elementary (effective July 1, 2026), and to relinquish the material currently at Hyder/Dateland Elementary to the school district. Each motion carried on voice vote.
The action preserves the material at the schools rather than moving books back into the county library system; Jones told the board the changes reflect security and operational shifts at the school sites and a desire to focus library staff resources on other service models. The board did not vote on a specific timeline beyond the stated July 1, 2026 effective date for the terminations.
Next steps: library staff will carry out the terminations and work on the five-year plan points Jones described, including pursuing property or a mobile-unit strategy and coordinating with school districts on the relinquished materials.
