Recently, the San Francisco Examiner published an article about our partnership with Raising A Reader! Check out an excerpt from the article below which mentions one of our pilot sites, Jose Ortega Elementary School in San Francisco.
Raising a Reader, which distributes books to young children so their parents can read to them, recently expanded from preschool to kindergarten with a pilot program at Jose Ortega Elementary School. And, a $250,000 grant from the Masons of California will soon put Raising a Reader in 250 kindergartens across the state.
“It’s not just about reading aloud,” said Ortega kindergarten teacher Cynthia Young, whose students each borrow four books every week. “It’s about getting kids excited about books.”
Educators have long known that children from low-income families are less prepared for kindergarten. They are less likely to know their ABCs and less likely to have books at home. Raising a Reader aims to help these children catch up. That’s especially important at Ortega, a San Francisco public school where 60 percent of students come from low-income families and a quarter are just learning English.