An assortment of school system officials were instrumental in preparing Colquitt County Schools’ application for the Striving Reader Comprehensive Literacy Grant, which the system was recently awarded. Back row, from left, are Joan Ball, Eric Croft, Charla Brinson, Michelle Daniels, Leamon Madison, Josh Purvis, School Superintendent Samuel DePaul, Jenny Funderburk, Ricky Reynolds, and Marc Bell. Front row, from left, are Todd Cason, Teresa Willis, Trish Lirio, Darlene Reynolds, Terri Carr, Debra Turner, Lynn Clark, Sherry Jones, Chuck Jones, Krista Harrell, Summer Hall, Bruce Owen, Robin Calhoun, and Jim Horne.

Colquitt County elementary school students will get a boost to reading with a $1.9 million grant awarded to the school system.

Georgia was one of six states awarded federal funding in 2010 for the Striving Reader Comprehensive Literacy Grant. Colquitt County competed with 36 districts in the third year of the annual grant awards, the system said.

The grant will be used over five years to advance literacy skills for students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

Initially at least, the system’s focus will be on teacher training, said Lynn Clark, the school system’s director of pre-K and elementary curriculum.

This will include “professional learning on best practices in teaching every child to read and to comprehend and to build vocabulary,” she said.

Some training will take place within the system, but some also could entail attending professional conferences with experts and having some personnel trained outside the system to come back and share what they learned.

In addition, all students will have a pre-assessment in order to learn the students’ strengths and weaknesses and teach to those. Currently there are 4,559 students in kindergarten through fifth grade, Clark said.

In order to make a successful proposal, Colquitt County personnel worked together, she said.

“I was told it would be very difficult to get 10 schools funded,” she said. “Collaboration was the key. We did a lot of self-assessment; we did a lot of self-reflection. The 10 grant writers worked together to come up with a coordinated plan.”

Clark said that reading is the backbone of all education, as students must be proficient in reading and comprehension in order to be successful in all of the other subjects.

According to Georgia Department of Education’s 2010-2011 Report Card, 54 percent of the state’s third graders met reading standards, while 6 percent did not meet the standards and 40 percent exceeded them. For Colquitt County third-grade students, 6 percent did not meet reading standards on the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, 63 percent met and 31 percent exceeded.

For fourth graders in Colquitt County, 15 percent did not meet standards, while 47 percent met and 27 percent exceeded them. For all fourth-graders tested in the state, those numbers were 12 percent, 50 percent and 38 percent, respectively.