On Tuesday, December 4th, 2024, MARA held a community meeting with our partners and local community members. The primary focus was addressing the ongoing crisis surrounding low reading scores among 3rd graders in our community.
On July 1, Indiana Senate Bill One, known as “Every Child Reads” went into effect. This law requires schools to hold back third graders who do not pass Indiana’s reading proficiency exam. If this law were in effect this past school year, about 50% of our public-school children would have repeated third grade. Repeating a grade can have detrimental personal and social consequences for young children, especially those who are already struggling in school. This is a crisis of huge proportions, and we are asking our entire community to respond. It takes a village.
Hundreds of trained tutors from the community are immediately needed. Tutor-ND, through an AmeriCorps grant, is equipped to train individuals from our community to tutor local children to provide extra literacy support and increase students’ chances of passing the IREAD exam. The commitment to tutor involves attending a 90-minute training with Tutor-ND. Once trained, tutors will be assigned a shift in a local school and the standard time commitment is 1.5-3 hours a week.
As someone who lives in this community, we are asking you to consider becoming a tutor yourself and to share this information and this request broadly with your social network. Please see the attached flyer for more information and a QR code to sign up. You can also sign up here: tinyurl.com/TutorND
Additionally, we are also requesting local businesses provide paid time off for their employees to tutor in the community during the course of their workday. If you have a contact with a local business, law firm, bank, school, please contact Cauzaè McCall by email: cmambassador@gmail.com or by phone: 574-710-3740. Cauzaè will reach out to that business and explain this opportunity.
By coming together as a community, we can ensure every 3rd grader has the tools and support they need to succeed, fostering a brighter future for all.
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