Rotary clubs call for Westside effort

Danette Goulet

NEWPORT-MESA -- Members of local service organizations have come up

with what they hope is a solution to lagging test scores in Costa Mesa

schools.

Former school board member Jim de Boom and the three Rotary clubs of

Newport Beach have teamed up to begin a fund-raising drive to buy

thousands of books for three Costa Mesa elementary schools.

“It’s wonderful,” said Sharon Blakey, principal at Whittier Elementary

School, one of the anxious recipients of the drive. “Books are the

cornerstone of learning and while we’re teaching children to read, there

is a huge need for entry-level, good-quality literature for children.”

The group has targeted the low-scoring Pomona, Wilson and Whittier

elementary schools, de Boom said.

“The overall goal is to get books in the hands of kids and improve

scores,” de Boom said.

And so the organizations are sending out a challenge to the community,

asking the public to make donations to match the $7,800 pledged by the

Rotary clubs of Newport-Balboa, Newport-Irvine and Newport Sunrise.

The books will be purchased through The Los Angeles Times’ Reading By

Nine program, which will allow Rotarians to use the program’s massive

purchasing power to get a 40% to 50% discount, said Rotarian Roger

McGonegal.

With that discount, McGonegal figured, a $25 donation -- matched by

$25 from the Rotary clubs -- would put about 30 books on the shelves. A

$10 donation could mean 12 books in a school library.

After buying and distributing the books, the groups hopes to begin a

local Reading By Nine effort.

Reading by Nine is a Southern California-wide literacy initiative,

started by the Times, that puts books in the hands of children and brings

adult volunteers into classrooms to read with students one on one.

The Westside schools set to receive the books have a large number of

non-English-speaking students, which has contributed to the area’s lower

test scores.

And following the passage of Proposition 227, which halted most

dual-language education, the schools lost a large number of Spanish books

in their libraries, McGonegal said.

Replacing those books with new English titles, teaching the students

to read and making them anxious to learn is key to improving those scores

and their education, de Boom said.

The Rotary clubs’ plan comes on the heels of a Costa Mesa election

that saw the victory of a City Council candidate, Chris Steel, who has

called for reduced services to noncitizens.

Steel said he had no problem with the fund-raising plan, saying he’d

support what de Boom was proposing.

The Rotary clubs hope to raise the matching funds by the end of

December and then begin recruiting about 2,500 volunteers, who would work

one hour a week at the schools.

The plan, de Boom said with a laugh, is to get the money by Christmas

and have people make volunteering their New Year’s resolution.

But the first thing, he said, is to raise money for the much-needed

materials instead of just complaining that the scores coming out of Costa

Mesa schools are not high enough.

“It’s not a teacher-only problem -- it’s a resource problem,” de Boom

said of the low test scores. “This is what we have to do.”