Greene school districts to receive major reading grants
Two Greene County school districts have been selected to receive more than $2.5 million in U.S. Department of Education grants over the next six years to help improve students’ reading skills. Vicki Phillips, acting state secretary of education, announced Tuesday that Central Greene and Jefferson-Morgan school districts were two of 21 districts statewide that will receive funding in the second round of the federal Reading First grant program.
Central Greene will receive $285,200, and Jefferson-Morgan is slated to get $134,000 in each year of the six-year program. In total, Central Greene will receive $1,711,200 and Jefferson-Morgan will get $804,000 during the life of the grant.
Dr. Jerome Bartley, Central Greene superintendent, said Wednesday the district will use the funds to increase its Waterford supplemental reading program for students from kindergarten through second grade. He said the money also will go toward staff development and for the purchase of mobile reading labs for classroom use.
Bartley said the district will enter into a reading collaborative with Ohio State University to hire a reading coach that will work with students and staff to implement reading programs. The grant also will help the district hire additional staff and upgrade technology, he said.
“We’re very pleased and looking forward to this summer to get the program implemented and the technology purchased,” Bartley said. “We’re thrilled to do it and can’t wait to get started.”
He said elementary principal Dr. Cathy Butcher, federal funds coordinator Glenna McDougal and curriculum and instruction and technology director Annette Bogo will work with him to oversee the program, which should be in place this fall.
While many of the districts that qualified for funding were considered low performing, Bartley said Central Greene continually has scored at or higher than state reading averages on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests. He said the reason the district was eligible for funding was a result of the high number of economically disadvantaged students within Central Greene.
Bartley said he will give a 5- to 10-minute presentation to the school board about the grant and what the district plans to do with the money at their meeting Tuesday night.
Donna Furnier, federal programs and curriculum director at Jefferson-Morgan, said the district will use the funds to upgrade the reading curriculum series for students in kindergarten through third grade and place reading coaches in each classroom. Additionally, she said, a the district will hire a “head reading coach” and create an administrative position to help get the program up and running and to track progress once it is in place.
While the funding is for K-3, Furnier said the fourth- through sixth-grade teachers have been focused on the same principles that will be used in the program for the younger students. She said the assessment portion of the program will use a method to give district officials instant feedback to better target instruction to improve student skills.
“Hopefully, we will have some prolific readers who will have a love of reading and will read to learn,” she said. “We’re very excited, and we are already preparing the staff to implement this program in the fall.”
Furnier said she, superintendent Dr. Charles Rembold, elementary principal Linda Mancini and several teachers went to Harrisburg last fall to learn more about Reading First and to prepare sooner rather than later for the program.
She said guidelines of the grant state that the program used by the districts that receive funding must be “systematic and explicit.”
She added that the district already has been working toward that type of approach to improve reading skills.
“Our priority has been making sure that kids are able to read and be proficient in it,” she said.
“I am very hopeful that, with this program, we are going to have voracious readers that will also perform well on tests.”
According to a release from the state, Reading First changes how reading is taught in low-performing school districts, to help districts improve reading achievement.
The program supports improvements in classroom reading instruction based on proven teaching methods, allows for screening and diagnosing of reading difficulties, monitors student progress and provides professional development for teachers, the release said.
“Providing effective tools early on fosters a learning pattern that sustains student success all the way through their academic life,” Phillips said.
“Reading First is just one way to facilitate the development of stronger reading skills necessary to establish academic success.”