Community Impact: After School Reading Enrichment Program

Overarching Goal - Investing in Children:  Tutoring/Enrichment

Children who are struggling in elementary school receive learning support in the form of after school tutoring Our key community outcome, or product, is that all children get the support that is needed to experience success in school and in life.

The Problem, Need and Underlying Causes

The target population is children who are struggling to keep up in elementary and middle school. Data shows that low-income children are two years behind a middle-income child by fifth grade. Low-income students fared less well in school: Only 68.9% of students from low-income households in San Juan County graduated from high school in four years, as compared to 75.2% for students overall.

Our initial role is to set up and oversee reading enrichment programs with paid and volunteer tutors as we did in our small pilot on San Juan Island last spring.

What are people doing already? Where are the gaps?

While some programs already exist, all island school district principals report that they need more support in the form of tutoring and/or enrichment programs for students who are struggling to keep up in school.

Your donation will help us, for example, to set up reading enrichment for students who are struggling 

In response to community need, we are running pilot programs on San Juan Island to provide reading enrichment for children who are falling behind in school (some of whom are homeless, couch-surfing). Your support of our reading enrichment programs would help us to duplicate the pilots countywide in 2017-18 so that children on all three islands who are falling behind have the opportunity to improve their reading skills and learn to love to read. This countywide program will require a total of 10 part-time paid positions for a two-month period in fall 2017, and again for two months in spring 2018. The student-teacher ratio will be 2:1, depending on the grade level, with a total of at least five volunteer tutors at schools on each island.

We plan to serve a total of 50 children on each island. We need to raise $15,000 for staff to oversee, coordinate, and implement the year’s programs, totaling $5000 on each island. Paid positions include Island Coordinators and two additional paid tutors on each island. United Way/school volunteers will tutor on each island, as well.

Other UWSJC activities in education include scholarships for preschoolers, funding for PIP programs, and piloting a Food For Kids! (backpack program for weekend for low-income students). We would love to partner with you in this important work to help break the generational cycle of poverty in San Juan County and create improved wellbeing for all.