Faribault Public Schools Receives Literacy Grant

The Faribault Public School Board held a business meeting remotely tonight with the news shared about a 1.3 million dollar four year literacy grant.

District Curriculum Director Tracy Corcoran told School Board Members she was excited to share the news, "We as Faribault pre-K through 12 programming have been awarded a closed grant which stands for comprehensive literacy state education development grant.  We are beyond excited.  It is a 1.3 million dollar allocation across the pre-K-12 system."

"What is really exciting is it takes the work you did with the circle grant and it really magnifies it across alignment from our early childhood programming all the way through graduation.  We're still really focusing on reading well by third grade.  Really focusing on those evidence-based practices using coaching as our vehicle to really improve our core literacy instruction."

Corcoran added, "It also has a family component to it.  That family partnership we know is so critical.  It's going to give us the opportunity to hire family literacy specialists.  We will have a pre-K through 5th grad family literacy specialist and 6th through 12th grade family specialist within the grant funding."

School Board Member John Bellingham asked what a family literacy specialist does and was answered by Community Education Director Dr. Anne Marie Leland, "All of the building leaders have done a really nice job at stepping up their family engagement practices.  With this we'll see some kind of family programming that we could have.  We've tried that before but I think we can move that to a different level now."

Leland said, "Concentrating on the whole family when it comes to language acquisition, literacy acquisition is going to be a win both for the child and for the adults in that family.  It will just strengthen that family very much and support our kids with more success."

Faribault Public Schools Superintendent Todd Sesker was given a glowing review by the board for particularly communicating with the public.  In that realm Sesker will be on Tuesday's KDHL AM Minnesota program to discuss the district's preparation for school this fall.

The show runs from 9:30 to 10:00 a.m.