School News

Good reading rewarded in District 30

Recognized nationally for early intervention program

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An early intervention reading program in Valley Stream has received national attention, as District 30’s “A Stitch in Time” was recognized by the American School Board Journal.

The reading program received first place honors in the American School Board Journal’s 17th annual Magna Awards competition. There were five winners in the less than 5,000-student division, and District 30’s program is highlighted on a full page in this year’s awards edition.

District 30 instituted its early intervention reading program, for students in kindergarten through second grade, a few years ago when school officials became concerned that many third-grade students were not reading on grade level. To date, officials say the program is a proven success, with 98 percent of students showing improvement on literacy tests.


The program includes a pre-kindergarten screening, in which registered students are evaluated before even stepping foot in a District 30 classroom. Superintendent Dr. Elaine Kanas said the screening used to take place once children started kindergarten, but she said that was too late and by then a month or two of the school year was already lost.

The pre-kindergarten screening focuses on a child’s understanding of letters and sounds. Kanas said if a students struggles with these skills, it is often an indicator of future struggles with reading. Students who are “at risk” get additional support over the summer.

Gerard Poole, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction, said the summer program is every day for five weeks, with reading support for an hour-and-a-half each day. There are only three or four children per group, he said, so the teachers can focus their attention on each student. “It’s very targeted to what the students need,” he said.

The summer program is open to students in grades K-6. Kanas said she hopes that the early intervention program will put the summer program “out of business” in the upper grades, because reading deficiencies would be identified and corrected by the time a child reaches third grade.

Poole noted that research shows if a child has reading difficulties as late as third grade, there is a good chance they will struggle academically through their senior year of high school. The early intervention program is designed to accelerate learning so students can “catch-up” to their classmates by the time they reach third grade, the first year of the New York state assessments.

It’s working, he said, as less than half the students who have been through the pre-kindergarten intervention program have been recommended to come back for more support the following summer.

Running the program is a team-effort, with Kanas and Poole taking part in the conversations along with teachers and principals about how each child is progressing. “Everybody’s focused on individual student success,” Kanas said. “We don’t just talk about how are the kids doing, but child-by-child. It really is about each kid.”

Kanas said that District 30’s program is about screening the children properly to identify any concerns, providing them with the right resources, having the right assessment tools to make sure they are making progress and offering a wide range of support services. She said testing is very important, because school officials don’t want to send a child through a whole year of intervention services and learn it wasn’t successful. The district uses a computer-based monitoring tool to evaluate a child’s progress every four weeks.

The Board of Education has supported the early intervention reading program, Kanas said, and the recognition by the American School Board Journal shows its investment was worthwhile. Board President Elise Antonelli will travel to San Francisco next month to speak about the program at the National School Boards Association conference.

Kanas said the district had to submit a detailed application for the Magna Award and attached all the statistics to show that the program is successful, as well as a list of the training teachers have been through. “We’re very excited,” she said. “It’s very rewarding.”

More recognition

Poole and Kanas will speak about the district’s successful summer program at the Summer Schools Administrators Conference in Saratoga in May. Poole said while summer schools are typically associated with high schools, he and Kanas are speaking about the successful elementary program in District 30.

The presentation will last about an hour-and-a-half, he said, and Poole said his goal is to show other school leaders what it takes to put together an effective summer school program. District 30’s program focuses specifically on literacy skills.

Poole said the School Administrators Association of New York State, which is hosting the conference, was looking for innovative and successful summer school programs to highlight. District 30 has had a summer program in effect for about four years.