The Westbrook School Department has received $5,000 from the Barbara Bush Foundation to form a plan for improving family literacy in the city.
Assistant Superintendent Jan Breton received the grant from the former first lady herself Monday at a ceremony at the J. Richard Martin Community Center in Biddeford. Bush handed out more than $300,000 in total to educational and community programs from around the state to help plan and implement programs that promote family literacy.
With the $5,000 grant, Breton said, the city will form a Family Literacy Program Committee that will recruit supporters like libraries to create programs that promote family literacy, figure out strategies for finding families in need and design and pilot a literacy program for five or six Westbrook families.
After the planning is done, the school department will apply for a $25,000 grant to implement a family literacy program for 12 to 15 Westbrook families with children 8 years old and younger.
Breton believes that increasing the literacy of parents can “lift the whole family out of poverty.” She said in Westbrook, 53 percent of children in pre-kindergarten through second grade receive free or reduced-price lunch. The 2000 U.S. Census shows that 8 percent of Westbrook households have an income of less than $10,000 per year – the highest percentage in the region. More than 18 percent of Westbrook families with children under 5 are at poverty status, and more than half of the families headed by females with children under 5 are below the poverty level, Breton said.
Though some 70 students are enrolled in programs that teach English to speakers of other languages, Breton said, the district lacks the same kind of programming for adults.
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