Madison School Board Candidates
Reading For At-Risk Children: In Their Words
As an attempt to channel usable information to voters who will participate in the 7 April Madison School Board Election, the 100 Black Men of Madison provided an opportunity for all candidates to answer the following question:
Given the vast amount of students who attend the Madison Metropolitan School System are from families at or below the poverty level, as a member of the MMSD School Board what specifically will you do to ensure that those children will be able to read at grade level before they leave elementary school? 
Maia Pearson:

I will prioritize establishing universal, full-day 4K. High-quality early education provides a benefit that has lasting value. However, families have many barriers to providing this for their children. Expense, lack of transportation, differing family schedules, and availability of openings are all obstacles. It is the Board’s responsibility to prioritize access by dedicating resources – time, staff, budget, and space – to address this educational gap.  In addition, I strongly support:
  • Smaller class sizes, and the presence of supportive staff in classrooms so that children’s individual learning processes can be supported with adequate one-to-one or small group learning.
  • Integrating parents and caregivers in the process of teaching literacy, so learning is reinforced outside of school. The Community Schools model should be expanded to facilitate this.
  • Renewed emphasis on collaborations with businesses, non-profits, and groups to support after-school and summer programs that reinforce literacy teaching.
Christina Gomez Schmidt:

As a school board member, I will take specific steps to give students the tools they need to read at grade level, including:

Ensuring any new K-5 reading curriculum is based in the best practices of how children learn to read and flexible to meet a range of learning needs. Teaching reading must remain culturally responsive, rigorous, and engaging so learning is accessible and relevant to all.
Supporting the addition of all-day 4-year-old kindergarten. Early childhood initiatives improve early literacy skills that make learning to read easier when school begins. 

Hiring and retaining more teachers of color. Both research and experience in our schools tell us that diversity and representation in our staff improve student outcomes. 

Partnering with organizations that provide academic opportunities after school and during the summer.

Building relationships with families. Good communication and family engagement can help schools better respond to learning needs.
Wayne Strong:

In order to improve reading for African American students, I would propose that we identify those families with children entering the district and get books to those families as early as possible. Research shows that African American children enter school with thousands of fewer vocabulary words than White students largely because so many of them are not reading at home and/ not being read to. Consequently, these students fall further and further behind academically leading to higher rates of dropouts and lower rates of graduation which in turn exacerbate the school to prison pipeline.
When these children enter our district, we must ensure that we are providing the resources to get each child reading at grade level through reading recovery and other intensive reading programs. The district has recently updated its literacy curriculum which upon implementation should improve reading scores for African American and Latino students as well.
Nicki Vander Meulen:

Reading has to start with a focus on creating a bridge between family and education. We need to work with our black and brown families to create a curriculum designed specifically with culturally relevant materials that engage student learners. This program needs to be flexible and phonics based, but most importantly it needs to be created with the input of the black community.
My solution is to create a task force that brings together black and brown community members with teachers, school board members, and students to critically examine the approaches to teaching reading that are currently being used by MMSD. The goal of this task force should be craft recommendations on how to improve reading ability and to make suggestions for future programs. We should also implement all day 4K, which is a bridge to prepare students for school and is an economical option compared to daycare.