Officials launch literacy initiative

Community leaders believe they’ve found the single most important component in improving Whitfield County’s economy and overall quality of life — the ability of all students to read on grade level by third grade.

They’re all coming together to support it.

On Thursday, representatives from the Dalton City Council, Dalton Public Schools, the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce, Whitfield County Schools and the Whitfield Board of Commissioners met at the Dalton Community Center to formally announce their support for a community-wide literacy initiative.

Organizers said the effort is a result of years of public meetings for discussion about the area’s greatest needs as well as ongoing talks that have escalated in the last month or two between all the local government and community entities.

In a nutshell, the school systems are collectively committing somewhere close to an extra $1.5 million for the upcoming school year to fund the Literacy Collaborative. The collaborative is a school reform model that focuses on training teachers in techniques and programs shown to accelerate learning.

Mayor David Pennington said the city of Dalton is working with the community to get kids ready for school through initiatives at the community center. They include nutrition and education programs to help parents learn how to care for their kids during their early years before they enter school as well as resources for families at other stages, such as a library and health center.

Chamber of Commerce Chairman Joe Yarbrough, a senior vice president at Mohawk Industries, said the unified effort marks one of only a handful nationwide in which entities from an entire community have been all on board.

Rick Hooper, chairman of the Archway Partnership’s executive committee, said that organization that has headed up community discussions about improving quality of life is committed to “encouraging investment in education to ensure that our students are the best and most prepared in the state.”

“As a community, we are committed to getting our children on grade level at an early age,” he said. “Today, we are here to celebrate and support our local school systems’ decisions to prioritize children and invest in their education in tough financial times.”

Whitfield school board Chairman Louis Fordham said school officials knew early on they were facing financial difficulties, but rather than solving the problem alone, they reached out to other local government and community entities for support, eventually reaching the consensus they announced Thursday afternoon.

“There’s no question we can spend too much on public education,” Fordham said. “We can also spend too little. We can do a lot better job by starting kids off the right way than by trying to fix them at the end of the process.”

County commissioners left the county school system with a $2.2 million funding gap when they did away with the business inventory tax beginning this year. School officials have said they didn’t oppose the move designed to keep the area business-friendly, they just weren’t prepared to absorb the loss in funding. They’ve responded by passing a budget built around a tentative 5-mill property tax increase, the equivalent of going from $14.76 per $1,000 in assessed property value to $19.76 per $1,000.

Yet county government and county school officials stood side by side on Thursday and said they support the literacy effort. Board of Commissioners Chairman Mike Babb said that as officials talk with businesses looking at locating in Whitfield County, “there’s nothing more important than the school systems” that will prepare their future work force.

“We now understand how important this is to our economic future, and our children’s future,” Babb said.

Dalton school board Chairman Danny Crutchfield said that school system has seen the number of students who exceed standards on state curriculum tests rise in the years since the Literacy Collaborative began in the city school system seven years ago. The framework takes 12 to 13 years to fully roll out, officials said, but results are usually evident within a few years of beginning it.

The city schools are bolstering their program after cutting several teaching jobs because of financial constraints two years ago, while county school officials are beginning theirs in six of the highest poverty elementary schools this year.

Pennington said the public is invited to a July 19 event at the community center from 4 to 6 p.m. to learn more about ways parents can work with their children over the summer and at other times when they’re not in school on ways that contribute to making them solid readers.

Local News

Search Results

Related Photos

Related Links

Discussion

Officials launch literacy initiative

‘We can do a lot better job starting kids off the right way’

Site Map

Contact Us