Grant to aid literacy programs
Published 3:14 pm Thursday, May 30, 2019
Cummins Leadership Foundation (CLF) announced in a recent press release that it will apply $5,000 in grant funding toward assisting Prince Edward County Public Schools with its literacy programs.
Whitney Cummins, CLF founder and president, communicated her excitement for this project in a video announcement that accompanied the release.
“Cummins Leadership Foundation has been extremely lucky to receive a grant,” she said. “And this grant is going to allow us to have community reading nights and to give books to kids, and I’m super, super proud to announce that this grant will be focused towards the children of Prince Edward public schools.”
Officials elaborated in the release that the literacy assistance will come in the form of new books for all classrooms in the elementary school, books for kids to take home to keep, incentives to decrease chronic absenteeism and community reading night programs. The goal of the funding assistance will be to increase literacy rates, reading and comprehension test scores, increase family and community support in children’s literacy efforts and, of course, increase the knowledge and interest in reading for all children in Prince Edward County.
Officials also noted that the announcement was coming on the heels of the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, a pivotal U.S. Supreme Court ruling that set the standard of equal education for all.
CLF opted to focus funding on Prince Edward public schools due to the five-year time period in which the schools rebuked desegregation and decided to close the public school system, the release cited.
“So as a result, kids lost much of their learning,” Cummins said. “Their reading skills were dialed backwards, and most of them, when they did go back to school, when the public schools were open to everyone, they fell back so many grades or they had to go back a number of grades. Some of them got frustrated and quit, and some kids just didn’t go back because (they thought), ‘What’s the point?’ (They’d) already been out of school for five years. So this led to generational illiteracy in this area, and they’re still battling with it today.”
The release noted that Cummins, who is a 1997 alumna of Longwood University then known as Longwood College, expressed gratitude to Believe in Reading Foundation and private funders for making the project possible.
“Thank you to the program that gave us the grant, and we are super excited to be able to bring the community back in the schools, to give these students books, to really let them feel the inclusiveness and the community’s support that they needed 65 years ago,” she said.