- October 19, 2022
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One of the core missions of Sarasota County Schools, according to Superintendent of Schools Terry Connor, is to improve literacy.
Connor said the importance of reading ability extends beyond students' individual needs, but also to the role they will play in the wider community after they graduate.
“I look at our school district as an economic driver in this community,” he said.
The district presented its Literacy for All plan to the school board in January, and in July, the board also passed its annual reading plan for grades K-12, budgeted at $11,401,286.
With students back in school, the ongoing efforts to revamp literacy instruction can be seen in action.
The plan has assigned a literacy coach and a literacy interventionist to each school, including secondary schools, among its many aspects.
“Being that our core mission is to increase literacy rates — we build our strategic plans, we align all of our resources, our funding, our staff, our human capital, our talent, toward the effort of increasing those rates,” Connor said.
Literacy for All replaces the district's former Reading Recovery approach.
Connor said Reading Recovery was reaching about 300 students through a "handful" of interventionists in elementary schools, while the new plan aims to reduce the amount of students who require intervention.
Last year, the district introduced literacy coaches to elementary schools, and this year expanded those coaches to secondary schools while adding more interventionists.
Each of the district's 40 schools is now allotted one coach and one interventionist.
“It would be very difficult for you to find middle and high schools that have literacy coaches," said Deputy Superintendent and Chief Academic Officer Rachael O'Dea. "That's a very different approach, and we're probably one of the few in the state to have that at scale."
Schools with additional funding sources, such as Title I funding, still have the ability to add additional staff.
While in Reading Recovery, Connor said, there were preset criteria for which students qualified for the program, decisions now rest in the hands of schools.
“Undoubtedly, there has been success with that program,” Connor said of Reading Recovery. "What we found, though, is it might not have been sustainable as they matriculated from first to second to third (grade).”
He said based on his personal experience, having served in four districts previously, he has found that a more individualized approach is extremely common.
“That approach is much more common than what we were doing with the Reading Recovery Program,” he said. “Not to say one's better than the other, but we just feel that we are going to get a larger impact based off the district model.”
In addition to adding new positions, the new plan also sees the district taking actions such as reevaluating practices and introducing new frameworks for monitoring the progress of students.
O'Dea said the district is "looking into the science of reading and what that means for the instruction that we're providing" and "investing in teaching our teachers, teaching our school-based administrators, teaching our district administrators."
As of the plan's introduction, Amy Bates has served as a literacy coach at Tuttle Elementary, having worked in various positions in the district for 20 years.
“We've always had professional learning and professional development for teachers, but sometimes that came from the top down, and it was just, ‘Tell teachers to do this and then send them to their classroom and hope it happens,’ and so now I get to kind of be that intermediary, where I get to actually go and support them," she said.
Bates' role involves entering classrooms to observe instruction and working with teachers.
“Some kids pick up easily from read alouds and from listening, and other kids need to do their reading,” Bates said. “Some kids need to write. Some kids need to use manipulatives like magnetic letters and things, and we are ready with tools in our tool belt to help every single kid, however they need it.”
Tuttle Elementary Principal Patti Folino said teachers have appreciated the ability to consult with someone on their students' needs.
“We talked about how in the Olympics, even the best athletes have coaches," Folino said. "Even our best teachers, we can all improve, because every year we get a new set of kids, and they're never the same, and their needs are never exactly the same."
She said the program has also has been beneficial for multilingual learners, who may not have the background knowledge needed to connect words to specific meanings.
Connor said the plan's success is reflected in the recent rise in English Language Arts scores in the district, which saw third-grade reading scores for students at Achievement Level 3 or above moving upward by 7%, from 61% to 68%.
Folino also believes the results are visible thus far at Tuttle Elementary.
"We moved up from a C to a B, and I call that success,” she said.
