Marietta City Schools Targets Child Literacy With $2.5M Grant

MARIETTA, GA — Marietta City Schools is now the focus of a new $2.5 million grant to ensure all Marietta children are proficient readers by the end of third grade, the district announced Thursday.

The grant program, called "Literacy and Justice for All," is described as a collaborative grant between MCS and the city of Marietta to create a "community-wide commitment to the science of reading" for reading proficiency improvement, according to a news release.

The first step includes a literacy training by national expert Margie Gillis of Literacy How, who will lead MCS staff through a series of facilitated discussions and exercises to establish a foundation for the initiative. The training is underway and will be complete May 7.

“It is an honor to lead the design and implementation of what we hope will become a national model for literacy,” Superintendent Grant Rivera said in the release. “Our school community and our city have an unwavering commitment to our children, and we believe MCS can accomplish that which has been elusive for many other school districts regionally and nationally: third grade reading proficiency.”

The program is also aimed to help address the learning loss as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the gaps in literacy opportunities that existed prior to the pandemic. According to United Way of Greater Atlanta — which will administer the grant money with support from the Joseph B. Whitehead Foundation — children who are not reading by the third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school.

The goal is to make Marietta the model for other communities in metro Atlanta, Georgia, the southeast and ultimately the national level to implement a similar program.

“The city of Marietta is proud to collaborate with Marietta City Schools and is committed to the success of the 'Literacy and Justice for All' initiative. From the foundation of our long-standing successful Marietta Reads! program, 'Literacy and Justice for All' will bring opportunities for these young minds to reach new levels of education not only with our innovative and creative Marietta City Schools but also with outstanding community support for the lifetime gift of literacy for our students,” Marietta Mayor Steve Tumlin said.

Marietta-based investments from United Way in year one include: teaching resources, trauma-informed training, professional development, social-emotional learning, community programming, early learning opportunities, personnel and evaluation.