ANSWER:

The seven positions are allocated at .5 FTE to the 14 most highly impacted schools. Each school determines how to best use the .5 FTE position to meet the needs of the students at the school. This could be in the form of implementing a Reading Recovery Program which includes daily, intensive, individualized instruction to three to four first graders for every .5 FTE position. Or, it could be in the form of implementing another type of reading support program at a school.

Reading Recovery (RR) is a short-term early intervention designed to help the lowest-achieving readers in first grade reach average levels of classroom performance in reading and writing. Identified students meet individually with a specially trained RR teacher every school day for a 30-minute intensive, individualized lesson. The purpose of the lesson is to support rapid acceleration of each child's literacy learning.

For schools using the position for interventions, teachers work with small groups of students to accelerate reading progress. For example, at one elementary school the .5 FTE is used for targeted reading interventions where the teacher meets with up to six students at time for intensive reading interventions three times per week for 25 minutes.

Reducing or eliminating these positions would reduce services to students who require more intensive support resulting in a negative impact on achievement. For example, students who participated RR "progressed nearly two months faster than similar peers who did not participate in the intervention, and gained nearly 30 percent more learning during the year than the average 1st grader nationally, according to the "Evaluation of the i3 Scale-up of Reading Recovery: Year One Report, 2011 – 2012."

The staffing data from other surrounding school systems is pending and will be provided as soon as it is available. The budget savings as a result of eliminating these positions, including employee benefits is $474,299.