EASTHAMPTON — An Easthampton High School librarian has requested a one-year leave of absence to draw attention to a sharp decline in library use, saying the space has become more of a hub for students to socialize and use cellphones than to read.

“The high school library is no longer a place where kids come to access books and engage in any sort of self-determined literacy,” EHS Librarian and Media Specialist Nicholas Ames said in a recent interview. “We stopped being a place where people come to check out books and kind of turned into more of a coffee shop where kids want to chat with me or hang out with friends.”

Ames, the school’s sole librarian, submitted the unpaid leave of absence request late last month. The School Committee will discuss the request privately in executive session at its next meeting.

Ames said the library has turned into more of a “Barnes & Noble-Starbucks mashup,” where students often use their phones for inappropriate reasons such as calling friends and family, copying each other’s work, using the internet or artificial intelligence to complete assignments and more.

When he started as librarian four years ago, Ames said students would check out between 10 and 20 books each month. That number has since dropped to just one or two a month during the last school year. Ames feels several solutions could remedy the decline and increase student reading, the main one being the addition of a bell-to-bell cellphone ban in Easthampton schools.

“Schools that have bell-to-bell cellphone policies, in my research, tend to correlate pretty strongly with library circulations going up,” Ames said.

In his leave request, Ames said he is deeply committed to students, teachers and the high school as a whole, but the current state of the library is not allowing him to fulfill his job description as an educator. Instead, he’s spending his time enforcing proper phone use.

Currently, Easthampton schools allow cellphone use before and after school, between classes and during lunch, but require students to store their devices in a phone pouch maintained by teachers during class times, unless specifically allowed by the teacher.

“Obviously, anytime we get employee or teacher feedback we take a look at it and I think it raises some interesting feedback about bell-to-bell cellphone usage,” Superintendent Michelle Balch said.

Balch said cellphone use in Easthampton schools is an ongoing discussion among administrators. She said they are keeping an eye on a proposal making its way through the state legislature that would mandate bell-to-bell bans in Bay State schools.

EHS Principal William Evans said administrators are never “completely satisfied with how cellphones interact with education.” He said he has not personally received a swell of feedback from parents, staff or students in favor of a bell-to-bell ban, but there have been some people who have encouraged it.

The state House of Representatives and Senate are currently in conference, discussing differences between each branch’s respective bills that would implement such a ban — House Bill 5366 and Senate Bill 2581. The Senate passed its bill last year, while more recently, the House passed its bill in April.

Multiple local districts have already taken action with cellphone bans. Northampton passed a bell-to-bell ban policy last month, while other schools in the area including Hampshire Regional High School, have had a policy for some time. Hadley and Belchertown also have similar bell-to-bell policies.

“If you take away this thing that — we’re all guilty of it — just captivates people’s attention and hits all the dopamine receptors, if that’s taken away, you’re going to look to replace that in other ways,” Ames said.

However, cellphones are just one piece of the puzzle, Ames said. With the high school’s block-style schedule, having four, 84-minute periods a day with a 23-minute lunch, Ames says there is little-to-no time for students to visit the library on their own. Additionally, he said there are likely other factors lingering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I don’t want to blame it all on the phones,” Ames said. “There’s just no time for kids to come to the library on their own unless they carve it out of their day or are willing to use their 10-minute bathroom pass.”

An alternative, Ames suggests, is to implement a flex or designated literacy block for students to venture to the library. Evans said the high school has previously explored having a flex block, but schedule changes need to be approved by teachers according to union contracts, which did not happen at the time.

“If we have something like a flex block, that might open up more opportunities at the library that has more choice,” Evans said, adding that is still a possibility in the future if staff feel it would work for them. “I think that would be great.”

Ames said he has purchased new books like graphic novels and kept the library open for two hours after school, among other methods to try and attract more foot traffic. Several teachers bring their class into the library once a semester which helps, he added.

Ames said this topic is not specific to Easthampton. He said administrators must start considering whether libraries are a literacy center for students or a third space.

“I strongly believe that there is a future for the EHS library to play a vital role in future generations rediscovering a love for reading and the community that it builds,” Ames wrote in his leave request.