About Us
In 2021, the John & Janice Wyatt Foundation (J2W) launched the Winchester Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (WCGLR), an official member of the national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (CGLR), a collaborative effort made up of foundations, non-profit partners, business leaders, government agencies, states and communities across North America that works to ensure that more children in low-income families succeed in school and graduate prepared for college, a career, and active citizenship.
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J2W’s mission is to level the educational playing field for disadvantaged youth by focusing all available Foundation resources toward increasing access to, and improving the quality of, the early childcare and out-of-school time systems within their service areas through grants that support high-impact programming.
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J2W first grant in Winchester supported the WPS Internet for All initiative to help provide broadband Internet access in homes to allow children to complete coursework remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. They provided PreK take-home kits to all 144 students in the WPS Virginia Preschool Initiative (VPI) during the initial school closures and funded the Bridge to School summer program at the Kids Club to help elementary school students prepare to return to school in the fall after the shutdown ended.
Once the pandemic ended, J2W awarded a grant to WPS to fund a quality coach within the early childhood department to work directly with private sector early childhood educators in center-based programs to improve their instructional competencies. By year three of the grant, this coach was working with 14 classrooms and impacting over 140 students. J2W also helped to fund the Story Walk in Jim Barnett Park and the Family Place Library accreditation process with Handley Regional Library System.
Since 2021, programs funded by J2W have impacted over 11,000 children in Winchester alone.
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WCGLR’s overall goal is to increase the percentage of third graders reading at or above the proficient level by at least 75% by 2032 by focusing on three main areas: school readiness, school attendance, and summer and afterschool learning. Each of these goals represents a key research-backed predictor of school success and strives to tackle head-on the obstacles to achieving grade-level reading.
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Leyendo Juntos, WCGLR’s Spanish-language outreach program, focuses on increasing reading and literacy skills among Spanish-speaking children; afterschool program support, and the Birth to 5 initiatives with Healthy Families and Handley Library.
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Mission
The Winchester County Campaign for Grade-Level Reading has a goal to double the number of third graders reading at or above the proficient level in the next 10 years.
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The community’s action plan addresses three underlying challenges that can keep young children, especially those from economically challenged families, from learning to read proficiently: school readiness, school attendance and summer learning/afterschool programs. The Winchester Campaign for Grade-Level Reading mission is to help remove roadblocks to success through a holistic approach to strengthening the education to workforce development pipeline.
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Goals
Grade-Level Proficiency: Increase the percentage of third graders reading at or above the proficient level to at least 75% by 2032 based on the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) Reading assessment.
School Readiness: Increase the number of children ready for kindergarten to at least 80% on the PALS-K by 2032.
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School Attendance: Reduce chronic absenteeism to rates at or below 10% among K-3rd graders by 2032.
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Summer and Afterschool Learning: Increase by 100% the number of K-3rd grade students who have access to summer and afterschool opportunities by 2025.
Vision
An engaged Winchester working together to better ensure our youngest citizens have the foundations to succeed in school and graduate to become productive and active citizens. Research shows that being proficient in reading by third grade enables students to shift from learning to read to reading to learn and to master more complex subject matter in the grades that follow. Failure to reach reading mastery leads to a downhill trajectory in a student's academic life. CGLR provides communities with a vast library of no-cost tools and professional development to serve the families and educators in their community. The Campaign also shares critical information to help communities share “lessons learned” and strategies from leading experts in the field of education and philanthropy.
