On Wednesday, January 18, 2023, Savannah Chatham Public Schools System's All Aboard the Reading Express literacy initiative announced a partnership with Curtis V. Cooper Primary Health Care, Inc.  The partnership will support the clinic's ongoing community wellness efforts by providing early strategies for fostering literacy and learning at home.

On October 1, 2021, the SCCPSS Academic Affairs Department was awarded an Innovative Approaches to Literacy Federal Grant to implement the “All Aboard the Reading Express" project to leverage community and school partnerships to enhance literacy opportunities and access to free language-appropriate books for students in the Savannah-Chatham County community. This project will focus on eleven (11) schools that serve a high population of English-Language Learners (ELL) and will also focus on urban, rural, and/or Economically Disadvantaged (ED) communities. The grant continues to provide free grade-appropriate, multicultural, and multilingual books to build at-home libraries for students and their families through the English-Language Learner Backback Buddies Book Program and biannual Books on Wheels events at each selected school site during the 2022-2023 school year.

Wednesday marked the first distribution by SCCPSS to Curtis V. Cooper of free age-appropriate multilingual and multicultural books and literacy information for families.  At each annual well-child visit from birth to age 4, parents and guardians of children ages 0-4 will receive a bag containing a bilingual book appropriate to their child's developmental stage as well as literacy tips and ideas for at-home learning activities. Each handout includes a QR code and web address to a free warehouse of interactive online tools and information on local community resources from birth to 12^th grade.

Through the U.S. Department of Education's Innovative Approaches to Literacy federal grant funding, the SCCPSS IAL Teacher Specialist will coordinate with Curtis V. Cooper staff to maintain an ongoing distribution of books for children ages 0-4 during the grant's period in order to increase access to books and training on the powerful family bond that literacy brings.

See more photos from the event here.