Spring Branch ISD Featured News

 

Many of Spring Branch ISD’s prekindergarten programs opened this school year with classrooms full of smiling moms and dads, and  – importantly and for good reason – three books for all students to take home on the first day.

 

Every 3- and 4-year-old prekindergarten student enrolled in a Title 1 elementary school or district PreK early learning center received three personal books on the first day, Aug. 16. Parents took home a companion guide with top tips for reading with their children.

 

The free and age-appropriate books included Spot Goes to School, Big Dog Little Dog, and a children’s classic, Are You My Mother? For some students, it marked the very first books to claim as all their own.

 

At the Panda Path School for Early Learning, new Director Mandy Ruiz gathered all families together inside the adjacent Boys & Girls Club gym for a first-day message focusing on literacy and the importance to books in the home.

 

The district’s prekindergarten and 3-year-old classrooms use their first morning of school for parent and student orientations.

 

“Every child here this morning will receive three books to take home for their own personal library,” Director Ruiz said. “The purpose in giving you three books today is because reading is the most important homework that you and your child could do each and every night.”

 

“Reading will help your child get to college, or anywhere important that they ever will want to go as an adult,” Ruiz also said.

 

Jose Aguinaga, a district technology employee, has enrolled his son, Aiden, in one of the bilingual classes at Panda Path with a goal of making his son bi-literate and much more fluent in Spanish. His three books are written in Spanish.

 

Aguinaga’s family hails from Mexico; he wants his son to remain connected to the language and culture there. “Being bilingual is a big plus. We want him to grow up in both languages,” he said.  

 

Research strongly supports the power of personal reading and the importance of home libraries. By third grade, students who read at or above grade level tend to graduate from high school and attend and graduate from college at much higher rates than those not reading at grade level.

 

Books and home libraries are also predictors of success. One social science study of 27 countries found that the presence of book-lined shelves in the home – and the rich learning and language environment those volumes reflect – provides an enormous advantage to children in school.

 

One research journal estimates that a child growing up in a home with 500 books will, on average, attain three or more years of education than the child in a home with few or no books. Also, a child raised in a family rich in books is 19 percentage points more likely to complete university than a similar child growing up without a home library, research found.

 

“Regardless of how many books the family already has, each addition to a home library helps the children get a little farther in school,” research states. “But the gains are not equally great across the entire range. Having books in the home has a greater impact on children from the least-educated families.”

 

This PreK distribution was planned and conducted through SBISD’s Community Relations Dept. and its Family Education, Engagement and Empowerment Team, and paid for by using federal funds appropriated to Title 1 schools and students.

 

“There’s no better way to begin school than with books in hand and parent guides for how to support literacy in our very youngest readers,” SBISD Community Relations Officer Linda Buchman said. “Our families will especially enjoy reading together about Spot the Dog going off to school for the first time in Spot Goes to School, and the other two titles, including children’s classic Are You My Mother?”

 

A 2001 study by two social scientists found that the ratio of books to children in middle-income neighborhoods is 13 books to one child, while in the low-income neighborhoods the ratio is more like one book to 300 children.

 

However, studies also find that the so-called “book gap” is far easier to erase than other barriers involved in family poverty.