New Special Ed Grant to Support Elementary Literacy, Director Says
Southington Public Schools was recently awarded a $297,397 grant from the State of Connecticut under its new High-Quality Programming Incentive Grant Program. According to Director of Pupil Services Amy Aresco, that money will go to structured literacy support for Southington students in grades K-5 who are identified as needing assistance.
“We already knew that we wanted to put more focus on structured literacy needs at the elementary level," Aresco said. "A small committee had already started meeting about that focus. So when this opportunity came, it seem like the perfect marrying of our ideas and new funding. It provided the opportunity to enhance our vision beyond what we were already planning to do.”
Aresco said that applying for the grant was a team effort: “My elementary coordinator Amy Battaglia and Stephanie Lawlor, who is the curriculum coordinator for literacy, we all sat down and crafted the grant together.”
The state grant money will come to the town this fiscal year. According to Aresco, it will support four specific things. “The money is going to be utilized for four buckets: professional development for staff; materials around structured literacy interventions; additional support for students who are identified as needing structured literacy supports; and the development of an intensive, elementary, structured literacy academy.”
The students who will be receiving the reading support will be in grades K through 5. “We’re looking at data across all eight elementary schools,” Aresco explained. “We’re going to start a literacy leaders cohort to assess the support and data we have for the students who receive reading intervention, then develop support to fit their needs.”
One of her goals is to make it easier for students who need the kind of literacy help that the Special Education department provides to be identified early on. “That’s why we partnered with [Lawlor], the district’s literacy curriculum coordinator,” Aresco said. “With our new curriculum, we wanted it to be seamless when they identify a student who might require special education, so that their information feeds right into our special education process.”
The new structures and services are still in the planning stage: “We’re just getting started, so our plans will fill out as we move forward.”
