Dear Literacy Foundation Supporter,

With your help, and the efforts of many others, we are gradually moving the needle on children’s literacy in this region. As recently as a couple of years ago, some 66% of students in Sacramento County were reading below grade-level. The most recent data shows that 51% are reading below grade-level. This is progress, but it remains the case that over half of our students cannot read at grade-level.

At the Sacramento Literacy Foundation, our main focus is helping children attain grade-level reading proficiency. Originally we did this by funding the Library’s Summer Reading Program, designed to enable students to avoid losing reading proficiency over the summer and slipping further behind grade-level. The Library has fully funded the program and we no longer focus here.

The Foundation’s current endowment campaign, the Children’s Literacy Endowment, is dedicated to children’s literacy programs. Literacy is a relational skill. A child’s relationships – to parents, to siblings, to friends, and to his or her library and other sources of printed matter – are what enable the child to read, and reading is what enables a child to build deeper, richer relationships.

One’s relationship to the wider world and ability to participate fully in his or her world depends on reading facility. Our aim is to give as many children in our region as possible the literacy skills necessary to function fully in our interrelated world. Please help us achieve that goal.

We thank you in advance for your investment in the health of our community.

James L. Deeringer

Board President