Looking for advice on teen behavior issues
Hi all! I recently took a new job at a different library in my city. It’s in a lower income part of town and I’ve come to find out that there are large numbers of kids around ages 11-16 who are at the library by themselves all day after school from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m., all day on the weekends, all day any school breaks, and all day during the summer. We have an afterschool hangout space that’s staffed with a staff member and various things for them to do, we have snacks of food donations that we put out to feed them, we have video games and computer games they can play. We’re also in a sort of strip mall with other businesses like a grocery store, a liquor store, fast food etc… so they bounce around on those motorized bikes between all these places and the library and just get up to so much shit. I’ve only been there for a few months and I’ve seen them steal locks off our bathroom doors, trash our outside patio, get into physical fights, say so many swear words, congregate in big groups and get in patron’s way, graffiti our building, trash our bathrooms etc… We do have a patron code of conduct and can ask them to leave for the day over these behaviors (though they’ve taken to sometimes refusing to leave for a staff member and waiting for the non emergency police we called to show up before they finally do.) My boss can and does issue suspensions, but he has a lot of other job duties and can’t always get around to it and is a big softie for these kids. Anyway, I’ve got patron complaints, staff complaints, and next week I’m going to sit down with our Assistant Director and tell her these issues. I’m planning on advocating for our library (which is a big building and surrounding alleyways and parking lots) to get a security guard. I’m very much expecting them to say there is no budget for that. Looking for feedback on maybe other suggestions of things to try, or tips on how to advocate for my staff to the assistant director, and wanting to hear if other libraries have similar problems? I will add that I am very anti-police and don’t really want these kids to be placed in a spot where they’re closer to making contact with our horrible American carceral system but I am out of ideas! One teen even filmed me with his phone while laughing while I told him he and his group needed to be quieter yesterday because people were trying to use our study room. We’re a one party consent state so I can’t do anything about it but man it made me mad and showed me that these kids do not respect staff.