Improve reading skills, say educators

Education leaders in the Pine Bluff area met again last week to discuss pressing needs in their field, and all agreed that improving reading skills was chief among them.

Nate Todd, one of the conveners for the hybrid in-person/ Zoom meeting, said less than 20% of children locally are reading at grade level, and his hope is that local school districts can double that percentage in the near future.

“It’s going to take the library, faith, parents and work areas to help with that,” said Todd, who is also secretary of the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs. “It also takes parents volunteering at schools.”

In short, community partners will play a big role in helping improve youth literacy, a point with which the group concurred.

“Literacy is the foundation for everything you do,” Pine Bluff School District Superintendent Barbara Warren said. She is a proponent of Arkansas’ Excel by Eight campaign, which has a mission to ensure all children can read at grade level by the end of third grade, in which a majority of students are 8 years old.

“When they are not reading by 8, there are many challenges they have to overcome,” she said.

The meeting was co-organized by Todd and Freddie Scott, an operations manager for the engagement unit of the Arkansas Department of Education’s Division of Elementary and Secondary Education. Scott is also a member of Warren’s community advisory board, which she assembled late last year to assist in development of a strategic plan for the state-operated district.

The education leaders last met in a similar setting in January, and Scott said the objective of the latest gathering was met.

“Our goal was to identify the challenges that exist and to find out what do schools need to succeed,” Scott said.

Scott and others discovered “ample resources” exist to improve literacy and the overall quality of education.

Among the resources is Students of Achievement and Responsibility, or SOAR. It’s an after-school tutoring program led by former NFL linebacker and University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Coach Monte Coleman that’s based on the fourth floor of First United Methodist Church. Coleman said the program is open to eighth- through 10th-graders, but they’re asked to commit to SOAR until they graduate.

The Watson Chapel School District hopes to unveil a reading bus that will serve as a mobile library for students in the near

future, an idea first introduced at a district board meeting earlier this month. The district is also working on a building campaign to replace the 77-year-old junior high school campus with a new high school.

“Tearing down the education system will get us nowhere,” Watson Chapel Superintendent Andrew Curry said. “Public schools are a great equalizer. They give us a chance to do better.”

Warren has engaged potential members of a district facilities committee that would discuss plans for construction of a new Pine Bluff High School.

Warren addressed the negativity she’s received in recent months as the PBSD tries to meet the state Education Department standards to exit state control and restore a local school board.

“We have to embrace education and community all in the same hug,” Warren said. “All anyone can do is to say something positive when someone is being negative. When we don’t raise the bar for encouragement, that’s a pain point. This is the time to have positive encouragement.”