POTTSTOWN — If you're reading these words, you understand the value of knowing how to read.

What might not be as clear is how important it is for a child's education to expose your children to the basics of learning this skill as soon as possible.

Never fear, the folks at the Pottstown School District understand its importance and they have an easy — and free — way to teach parents how to do it.

They're called Family Literacy Nights and this year five of them are planned: Sept. 13, Oct. 4, Oct. 25, Nov. 15 and Dec. 6.

The basic idea, said Assistant Superintendent Jeff Sparagana who spearheaded the initiative, is "to provide parents, who are for all intents and purposes a child's first and best teacher, with the skills necessary to teach their child to read at home."

The events were initially geared toward parents of 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds, but this year component for first grade students will also be added, said Sparagana.

He explained that because program was begun two years ago, there are now students who are entering first grade who were with the program when it began "and we want to stay with them to help keep those skill levels up."

Family Literacy Nights are part and parcel of the district's

ground-breaking school readiness initiative called PEAK.

That initiative is geared toward getting Pottstown's youngest students as prepared for school as possible and involves partnerships with a bewildering array of child care providers, government funding streams and outside consultants.
One of those consultants, Step-By-Step Learning, had a three-year contract with the district that is now ending and one of the components of that contract was to enhance parent-engagement efforts the district was already making.

One result was Family Literacy Nights.

Each evening has a theme, such as letter recognition" or "letter sounds" and parents are provided with information about activities and ways to help their child with these skills while the children spend time with teachers doing those activities.

The family is reunited to practice together, and then snacks and a raffle end the evening, with raffle prizes being such things as books, CDs and other material all geared toward teaching our youngest Pottstownians to be ready to read when they come to school for the first time.

All the material for the raffle prizes, which have included a home computer, are donated by local businesses and residents and the 45-or-more staff members who participate volunteer their time, so there is little to no cost to the taxpayer.

In fact, a fundraiser to help support the program will be held at Boscov's this Saturday, Aug. 27, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and all elementary schools in Pottstown are conducting a book drive to add to the loot given away at Family Literacy Nights.

Sparagana said the event was organized by Colleen Blute, a long-time kindergarten teacher at Barth Elementary School and a member of the literacy night committee.

"The idea is to help parents develop their own home library for their children to help encourage reading," Sparagana says. "All of this reinforces the things happening in school."

While the costs to Family Literacy Nights are minimal, the benefits are significant.

"We know that the highest percentage of children who succeed at a high level in school, are the ones whose parents are directly engaged with what's happening with the teacher and the child in the classroom," Sparagana said.

That effectiveness of the Family Literacy Nights and other PEAK initiatives is not just supposition.

Sparagana said benchmark tests giving to each kindergartener entering the district show an 11 percent increase in skills in the last five years.

Further, he said a research scientist from Lehigh University has been following Pottstown's progress and has data that shows real improvement.

The need for such intervention is evident when considering the obstacles to success that must be overcome by Pottstown's school population in which 45 percent of children 0 to 5 live in low-income families; 65 percent of all students are economically disadvantaged in some way; and 30 percent lives below the poverty line.

Given those obstacles, Sparagana said it is encouraging that 57 percent of the parents who had pre-registered their children for kindergarten attended at least one Family Literacy Night.

"We found that even of the child and parent some to just one literacy night, the results show that their child comes to kindergarten better prepared," Sparagana said.

He said assessments also show that the many of the skills to which the children are introduced in those sessions stick with them through kindergarten into first grade.

The success of the program has not gone unnoticed regionally and nationally.

Visiting educators from Pittsburgh, Erie, Hazelton and Ohio have come to Pottstown to see the program in action.

And later this year, Sparagana said Pottstown will be giving a presentation on its programs at a state conference of elementary educators in November; and subsequently at another conference in Florida.

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