Our school is one of just 12 “Science of Reading Spotlight Schools” in Alabama this year, but getting here wasn’t easy. Rewind the clock back to the fall of 2021 and just 15 percent of our kindergarten students were proficient in reading. A “full support school” since 2018, we were dealing with some major challenges. I stepped in as principal in 2020, and began looking for ways to solve the issues and get things on the right track.
I learned about Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling Suite (LETRS) from my mentor principal at the state department, which works with schools like Central Elementary to establish the specific benchmarks that each Alabama school must reach.
