Each year, there are many families across our communities who are not prepared to send their children to school on the first day. In our regions urban core, nearly one and three students live in poverty and are food insecure. As a result, these school systems have approximately 90% of their students on free or reduced lunches. As a result, student achievement and the success of our schools is greatly diminished because of a lack of resources. READY DAY ONE seeks to identify and address the internal and external challenges that serve as barriers to families returning to school. Our goal is to ensure that every child is ready to learn on day one... and that teachers are in place to insure that learning begins on the first day of school!
The Challenge
For a sundry of reasons, there are many families in our community who do not send their children to school until the Tuesday after Labor Day each year. As a result, students begin the school year significantly behind the majority of their classmates in their courses of study. They also find themselves significantly behind in assimilating into the classroom culture.
There is also an impact on the school system in the day-to- day operations and in the funding of the school system. Like most large organizations, the logistics of personnel and resources are a monumental task. Because of late enrollments, a process that usually takes two to three weeks to stabilize now takes five to six weeks. Also, schools are funded based upon average daily attendance from the first few weeks of school. At a time when educational funding continues to be significantly cut, we cannot afford to underfund our schools because our students are not ready on day one of the school year. To this end, corporations, non-profits, the faith-based community and government entities have joined together to support Superintendent Craig Witherspoon to launch the Birmingham City Schools’ “Ready Day One Campaign”. In 2014-15 Mission Alabama welcomes new partnerships with DHR and the Fairfield City Schools. The campaign has three phases – |