HCPSS BOE Approves $2 Million Grant to Advance Literacy, Birth-Grade 12

July 16th, 2018

The Howard County Public School System (HCPSS) Board of Education approved a $2 million Striving Readers’ Comprehensive Literacy Grant at its regular meeting last week. Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) will award the grant to HCPSS over three years to support the reading and writing achievement of all Howard County children, from birth through grade 12, with consistent, high quality literacy education.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Education awarded MSDE a $45 million federal grant, with 95 percent of the funds passing on to local systems to support their literacy work. Each system interested in obtaining the funding was required to create a district-level Comprehensive Literacy Plan (CPL). The CPL must be in alignment with Maryland’s literacy plan, which focuses on educational leadership, strategic professional learning, continuity of standards-based instruction, comprehensive series of assessments, and tiered instruction and intervention.

The HCPSS Language Arts offices, in collaboration with the Early Childhood, ESOL, Special Education, Title I and accountability offices, revised the HCPSS Strategic Literacy Plan into a district-level CPL to fulfill the requirements of the grant. The first year of funding will support HCPSS’ initiatives to develop consistency among prekindergarten programs, build more comprehensive assessments and interventions at the elementary level, and update instructional programming at the secondary level, and more.