Superintendent Discusses Plans For New Literacy Centers at Each Levittown Elementary School

The Levittown School District will implement literacy centers into its instruction for students at each elementary school in the district when schools re-open next month.

Superintendent Dr. James Grossane discussed the new literacy centers, which will run the same program for all district students, at a planning meeting for the Levittown school board on Wednesday night. Teachers will bring their classes to each of their school's individual libraries, where certified reading teachers will work with the students on specific skill-development strategies.

"We're going to be monitoring ways that we can enhance literacy instruction," said Dr. Grossane. "We can work on topics like monitoring comprehension, activating background knowledge, questioning, visualizing, inferring, determining what's important in texts, summarizing and synthesizing information."

The program's effectiveness will be judged based on a series of assessments given to students at the beginning and the end of the school year. The assessment at the beginning of the year will be used as a baseline to judge growth when compared to an assessment given at the end of the school year, after an instruction period.

Dr. Grossane said that the district hopes that the literacy centers will help raise student grades on state assessment tests for elementary and middle school students, particularly for students scoring high 2's or low 3's on the exam. "It gives them a special opportunity to focus their literacy skills," he said. "It also gives the student at a 4 level an opportunity to continue those skills so they can continue to perform. As we know, the test gets harder from year-to-year."

The past year's assessment scores were revealed to the board earlier in the meeting during a presentation given by Assistant Superintendent of Instruction Debbie Rifkin. Passing grades on the exams were generally in line with county averages at most grade levels and in most subjects, something that board president Mike Pappas wasn't satisfied with.

"We pay a substantial amount of money per pupil to educate our children," he said. "We're well above the county level for what we spend. With that, we should be well above the county level with our mastery and our passing scores."

The district also plans to unify its approach to education throughout its schools in order to reduce variances in scores from building to building. One of the district's attempts to do so comes through the literacy centers, which several board members expressed their support for at the meeting.

"I think this is a great move forward for us," said board trustee Ed Powers. "Being the father of two elementary kids, and speaking to certain teachers about this, I just think this is just such a win for the district overall."

"I don't get excited about too many things, but I'm excited about this," said Pappas. "I see this as a signature of [Dr. Grossane's] administration, and I see something that, if it works the way it's supposed to work, it should be done county-wide."

The literacy centers will be up and running on the first day of school.