"A drop in federal funds to the Charlottesville school division will cause a 12-year-old literacy program for struggling first- and second-grade readers to lose support.

Book Buddies is currently in place in five of the city’s six elementary schools and involves more than 80 volunteers. Four reading specialists will be eliminated because of a reduction in Title I federal funding in next year’s school budget. The 13 teachers funded using Title I monies will shrink to nine next school year, said Gertrude Ivory, director of curriculum and instruction for city schools.

Book Buddies volunteers and coordinators urged Superintendent Rosa S. Atkins and the School Board this week to use division money to keep the specialists who oversee the program.

“We can teach our kids about China, Greece, life cycles and logarithms, but if they can’t read the [Standards of Learning tests], they won’t do well,” said Donna Lewis-Wagner, Book Buddies coordinator at Clark Elementary, noting that focusing on a child’s literacy at an early age is crucial.

Former Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley visited Johnson Elementary in 1999 to observe its Book Buddies program, noted Marcia Invernizzi, a professor of reading education at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education who began the national program. Book Buddies received the 1997 Virginia State Reading Association’s Literacy Award for community service.

Atkins said that all Book Buddies programs will continue next year. However, she also said principals will be allowed more flexibility in how they can use Title I funds.

In Akins’ budget proposal for next year, one part-time and three full-time Book Buddies positions - the same number as last year, according to the budget’s expenditure summary - are earmarked to receive about $182,000.

While the division cannot fund the specialist positions, Atkins said it will use monies to fund services for an “alternative model.”

Atkins’ budget proposal includes a new $230,000 intervention and remediation program that involves after-school tutoring for at-risk students in grades 2-8 and a tutoring program during the school day that connects with teachers’ lesson plans.

“The value of this type of program is that it closely follows the day-to-day instruction so the intervention actually happens long before it can have a negative cumulative effect on the student,” said Atkins, noting that it has been used successfully in Caroline County and Richmond schools, divisions where she previously worked.

A Book Buddies volunteer, Jenny Ackerman, said that the connection with the community that Book Buddies has sparked makes it valuable.

“I understand the impulse to find different ways to serve the children in our system who are performing below grade level,” Ackerman said, “but before we diminish or jettison a program as effective as this one, we should be fully aware of what we’re sacrificing.”" (Matt Deegan, The Daily Progress, February 17, 2007)