St. Regis to receive $250,000 literacy grant

St. Regis School was the recipient of a $250,000 grant through the Office of Public Instruction. On January 31 it was announced that 21 Montana school district were being awarded Montana Comprehensive Literacy Project grants. These grants are funded through the federal Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Program. The purpose of the grant is to advance reading, writing, and digital literacy skills in students, with an emphasis on disadvantaged children.

Districts were eligible to apply if 50 percent or more of their students are eligible for free/reduced price meals or the district has 15% or more students with disabilities. All grant applications were put through a rigorous external peer review process for scoring and selection. Each eligible district was required to write a high-quality plan for improving literacy scores from age 4 to grade 12, with special attention given to transitions between age 4 to kindergarten, elementary to middle school, and middle to high school.

“This federal grant will assist the OPI in meeting many of the federal mandates within our ESSA state plan,” Superintendent of Public Instruction, Elsie Arntzen said. “Showing growth in student achievement, reducing student achievement gaps, and increasing digital skills in reading and writing are part of Montana’s long-term goals for student success. Congratulations to the Montana schools who were awarded grants. We look forward to seeing your students’ progress.”

St. Regis Superintendent, Joe Steele, said they had put a team together to write the grant, headed by former St. Regis Superintendent, Judy McKay. Together they put over 120 hours into the grant which requested some intervention tools, as well as applications and programs the school could purchase that would help fill the gaps in their Summit Student Learning program.

They are also hoping to hire an instructional coach to address literacy concerns and want to set up a format where students move up when they have mastered the skills in those sections, rather than having social promotion every year.

This should help alleviate some of the gaps in the program, especially in literacy where over the past year they learned there were a lot of gaps in the secondary level in those skills.

“Comprehension and decoding skills were areas that we really had to shift and create a reading support for those student,” said Steele. “The content with the Summit platform is much richer than it has been traditionally and the reading level is much higher. We had known it would be much more rigorous but it wasn’t until this year that we realized that some of these kids are really struggling and don’t understand what they are reading.”

He’s hoping with grant funds they will be able to address these issues. In addition to an instructional coach they are hoping to hire a Title teacher to assist with testing and reading data as well as help teacher personalize the material and so students can master the content.

The grant also requires literacy development from birth to age 5. St. Regis already has a partnership with the Mineral County Parents as Teachers Program. There are plans to open a well-baby clinic at the school for community members and help them promote literacy skills for infants.

The Summit platform started with grades 6 through 12. Last year grades 4 and 5 were included into the program. For kindergarten through grade 3, the school is looking at ways to develop the skills needed to master literacy once they start using the Summit Learning Program.

“This is a team approach to literacy,” said Steele. “I have an excellent staff here and they are very committed to learning and it’s been fun working with them.”

A team of teachers who represent all the grade levels will be traveling to Helena soon for additional training. This grant was through the U.S. Department of Education and Montana was awarded $24 million last fall as part of the federal Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Program and the state-wide award amount is $8,062,385 each year for the next three years.

Steele said OPI is still adjusting some of the grants and there is a possibility that St. Regis may receive additional funding. Some of the other area school districts to receive grant funds include Clinton, Charlo, Libby, and Lincoln.