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.”
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