Warrensville Heights will use a federal grant -- and hopefully the goodwill of the community -- to improve the poor reading scores of its middle schoolers. ideastream's Kymberli Hagelberg has a report on a school/city reading collaboration set to take place in September.
(Fade in kids chanting...)
The teenagers outside Warrensville Heights Middle School chanting support for Boo Radley and Tom Robinson don't really know much about the fictional characters -- yet-- but that's OK. Once school starts all city seventh and eighth graders will be assigned to read "To Kill a Mockingbird" for an entire semester. Adults have been notified through the mail that hundreds of copies of the Pulitzer Prize-winning courtroom classic are available for lending.
The Big Read program is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Its aim is to teach an entire community the importance of reading. At the kickoff ceremony, Mayor Marcia Fudge said she knows the book's themes of rape and racial inequality can be controversial for some in this mostly African American community.
FUDGE: " If you read carefully, you will see not only the issues that get everyone excited. But you will also see those issues that all of us need to be thinking about as it relates to character, as it relates to pride, as it relates to doing the right thing."
Just over half of Warrensville Heights Middle schoolers met the state proficiency standard for reading last year. The Big Read's classroom initiative begins September 25.
Kymberli Hagelberg, 90.3