Susie King Taylor Community School (SKTCS) and Savannah Classical Academy has announced a partnership with Ignite Reading, a virtual one-to-one reading tutorial platform, to help children improve their reading skills.

The initial plans are for 20 students from each school to receive the one-on-one intensive virtual tutorial reading sessions. Chatham Educational Alliance is funding the entire $100,000 for the reading program at both schools

SKTCS is a tuition-free, public K-8 placed-based charter school located in historic downtown Savannah. Savannah Classical Academy is a tuition-free, K-12 public charter school serving Chatham County residents. 

The Ignite Reading program is designed to help students master foundational reading skills and become fluent readers. In 2024, Ignite Reading provided virtual learn-to-read supplementing daily classroom learning to more than 16,000 children in 126 schools in the US.

“By the end of the 2024 - 2025 school year, 71% of our scholars met their end of year iReady Reading Growth Goal. We are ecstatic about the growth made! Our goal is to have all our scholars reading at or above grade level,” said Dr. Yanis Medina, School Director of Susie King Taylor Community School. “When Rick Roney and George Woods of Chatham Educational Alliance introduced me to the Ignite Reading program and offered to help fund our partnership, I knew there was a probability that Ignite Reading could help us reach that goal!”

“Savannah Classical Academy is proud to partner with Ignite Reading in launching this new pilot program to strengthen student reading skills,” said Barry K. Lollis, CEO of Savannah Classical Academy. “Part of our mission is to provide every student with the tools they need to succeed, and this initiative gives us another way to support learners who can benefit from additional, targeted tutoring. By being on the front end of this innovative partnership, SCA is not only working to enhance outcomes for our own students but also contributing to a program that has the potential to benefit students well beyond this pilot.” 

“We're honored that the Susie King Taylor Community School and Savannah Classical Academy have chosen Ignite Reading's one-to-one tutoring program to support their early literacy efforts this school year,” said Jessica Sliwerski, co-founder & CEO of Ignite Reading. “There are few skills as fundamental to students’ future success in school and life as learning to read, and yet we are facing a literacy crisis in America. The key to unlocking lifelong reading success lies in building a strong reading foundation. At Ignite Reading, we have seen firsthand that students make incredible progress when their school makes a commitment to foundational reading skills like the one made by Dr. Yanis Medina, Barry Lollis and their teams.”

With 69% of 4th graders not reading proficiently, more school districts are adopting innovative approaches to teach reading. Ignite Reading’s one-to-one foundational reading skills instruction delivered by virtual tutors trained in the Science of Reading gives every student the precise instruction they need to improve their reading.

Research by the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University confirmed that Ignite Reading students gained an additional 5.4 months of learning in one year of tutoring as compared to national averages. Strong levels of reading growth were realized across all student demographics, including English language learners, students with IEPs, and Black and Hispanic students.

The websites: https://www.sktcs.org, https://savannahclassicalacademy.org/, https://www.chathamea.org/ & https://ignite-reading.com  

I’d be glad to put you in touch with Dr. Yanis Medina, Barry Lollis, Rick Roney and Jessica Sliwerski to discuss this innovative and successful children’s reading program. Thanks!