The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (GLR) announced this week that St. Lucie County is one of forty-five new communities that have joined their nationwide movement to ensure early school success for children from low-income families.
Reading proficiency by the end of third grade is a critical milestone toward high school graduation and success later in life. Students who have not mastered reading by that time are four times more likely not to graduate high school. When poverty is thrown in, students are thirteen times more likely to not graduate high school. By 2020, the GLR Campaign hopes to increase the number of children from low-income families with third grade reading proficiently by 100 percent in multiple states.
The local GLR initiative is being coordinated by St. Lucie Reads, a group spearheaded by Children’s Services Council. The group involves local agencies who are dedicated to make children’s reading proficiency a priority. Other founding partners of this group include the United Way of St. Lucie County, St. Lucie Public Schools, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Early Learning Coalition and many more.
The St. Lucie Reads plan addresses three challenges that can lead to a lack of reading proficiency in students from low-income families – school readiness, school attendance and summer learning – as well as focusing on child development and family engagement. The group is working to educate the community on the importance of reading proficiency, to recruit reading mentors for our local schools and to encourage donation of books for the Little Library program.
A full list of community partners and additional information about the St. Lucie Reads initiative can be found at www.stluciereads.org.
The Children’s Services Council of St. Lucie County improves the lives of more than 30,000 children and families in our community by funding and partnering with quality agencies that ensure that every baby born is a healthy baby, stop child abuse before it happens, keep kids off the streets, keep them in school, and keep them away from drugs, alcohol and other risky behaviors.
