OBERLIN — The Allen Parish school district is implementing new programs that will provide students and their families with education and support for reading and learning skills.

Allen Parish Literacy Coordinator Stacy Weldon said the programs are designed to raise achievement in literacy outcomes from birth to graduation.

“Our commitment for the Allen Parish school district is to prepare students to persevere through life while supporting social-emotional development.” Weldon said. “We want to develop individuals who tackle challenges, think critically and champion their own learning experience while collaborating with all peers.”

The district’s goal is to have 100 percent of it’s students reading on grade level or showing progression by the end of each grade level with 100 percent of the instructional time focused on high-quality curriculum implementation and connected literacy intervention and acceleration or enrichment to improve achievement on assessments.

“We want to get those children ages birth to 5 and their families engaged in literacy before we even get them in our schools,” Weldon said. “That is something we really want to work for.”

Weldon and Title 1 Family Liaison Christy Patrick have been visiting schools and early learning centers to see what families need in terms of literacy and to develop plans to engage families and children in literacy.

“Literacy is not just about a child picking something up and reading the words off a page,” Weldon said. “It’s a development that we are working on.”

The Allen Parish Resource Center recently launched a monthly Facebook video series with hands-on activities for children and their families to do at home.

Over 4,000 books have also been ordered for early learning centers and pre-kindergartens classes in the parish. Community members will be invited to read to classes monthly.

Additional efforts are being made to create book baskets for communities offering free books to children. One local family has also put a free literacy library to offer free books in their community.

“What we are doing now will affect everything that will happen over the next 10 years,” Weldon said. “These young kids are going to be the ones growing up and going into our middle schools and our high schools, so we need to engage them early and show them the importance of literacy.”

The center is also partnering with the Allen Parish Library system to help promote literacy through activities including posting a bookmobile schedule, encouraging more people to obtain a library card and holding reading day activities.

The district has received three grants to help fund programs at Oakdale Middle and Kinder Middle schools. The grants are also being used to provide specialized professional development to improve literacy and school improvement to include literacy team development and teacher collaboration support.