West New York Middle School will get new books, software, and author visits thanks to a $110,631 federal literacy grant recently awarded to the district.
Only three school districts in New Jersey got the grant this year, and West New York is the only one in Hudson County.
“The funding we have received from this award will help give students every opportunity for academic success,” said Rosemary Alesandro, assistant superintendent of curriculum for the West New York Board of Education.
This grant is issued to schools presenting strong new literacy programs through their library. The city’s grant consultants, Bruno Associates Inc., helped obtain the money, known officially as the Improving Literacy Through School Libraries Grant.
Putting money to work
A good portion of the funds will be utilized to purchase new materials and provide additional reading programs to add to the already stellar media center and staff specialists at West New York Middle School.
“As part of that grant,” Alesandro said, “$50,000 will go towards new books for the library, and buying some equipment for the library such as listening centers, digital cameras, and some software for the existing computers.”
New programs will include book clubs, author readings, and various family literacy activities. In addition, the grant will also allow the school’s media center to extend its hours of operation.
“We will have library open an hour before and after school with media specialist on hand, so students [can use the extra hours] to use the books and work on homework,” said Alesandro.
The West New York Middle School will be launching a Reading First Forever Program, coordinated with teachers, students, parents and administrators as well as other district libraries and the West New York Public Library. The idea is to get families as involved as possible, and have the opportunity to learn with their children.
“There will be a family literacy night once a week for two hours, where middle school students and their parents will be able to come to library in the evenings and utilize the services,” said Alesandro.
Test prep
Some of the money is also being set aside to hopefully begin an extended day program for kids who are in need of extra tutoring to prepare for the state standardized tests.
“It will be a 35-week program held three times a week after school from about 3 to 4 p.m.,” said Alesandro. “Next summer [we’re hoping to implement] a four-week summer program of computer activities in language arts, targeting students who need additional help during the summer.”
The program will be able to service approximately 100 students.
Author visits
“We’ve also put some money aside, so we can have four different visits from authors and get them into the middle school,” said Alesandro. “We would like to start more of a book club and every month or so have a different author come, which will tie in [the material].”
The district is committed to developing a state-of-the-art library media center at its middle school by purchasing many more books to develop a core collection of fiction and non-fiction books, reference and audiovisual materials.
“One of the things [we realized] when we first opened up the middle school last year was the size of the media center, and even though we put money aside, we realized we had the capacity for so much more and we really wanted to utilize this space,” said Alesandro. “This grant will allow us to use the space outside the regular school day.”