01-06-2025
Read to Succeed Buffalo branching to Niagara Falls schools
The Niagara Falls City School District is looking for senior citizens to help elementary students read.
Read to Succeed Buffalo, an AARP Foundation Experience Corps program operating in Buffalo since 2016, will be expanding to Bloneva Bond Primary School on Niagara Street starting next school year.
SCHEER: Want to help a Falls school student? Volunteer to read
Dr. G. Lawrence McNally didn't want to stop providing medical advice to children and their parents.
The program wants to bring 10 to 20 people ages 50 and older to help improve the reading skills of kindergarteners, first-, and second-graders.
'The promise is, from the district, you will be welcomed,' said Supervisor Mark Laurrie, encouraging people to become volunteers during the program announcement on Friday.
'You'll be accepted. You'll be supported, and you'll work with great kids from Read to Succeed.'
After the volunteers complete a two-day training session in September, they will start working with students in October. A literacy coach supporting the tutors curates a library of read-along books they and the students read.
The helpers meet the students individually twice a week for 30-minute sessions for every week of the school year. Read to Succeed is eying between 30 and 36 students to participate, who are arranged to be taken out of English or language classes for their sessions.
Anne Ryan, the executive director of Read to Succeed Buffalo, said that by the end of the third grade, 78% of Niagara Falls students are not reading at that grade level, with two-thirds of fourth-graders across the state not reading at that level. Studies were done to show that tutoring like this has provided gains in student learning, with all the participating students in Buffalo schools last year improving their reading ability, reading fluency, and social and emotional learning.
'Even if they (the outcomes) weren't great, they appreciate the one-on-one mentoring that these adults provide,' Ryan said.
Read to Succeed is looking to have 10 volunteers each at Bloneva Bond and Henry J. Kalfas Elementary on Beech Avenue, remaining only at Bloneva Bond if they get less than 10 to 12. It is looking to expand to the district's other elementary schools in the future.
G. Lawrence McNally, a retired pediatrician, has been volunteering at Buffalo schools since 2023 after hearing from one of his wife's friends who also volunteers. He has found the experience very rewarding, with students he works with calling him Dr. Lars.
'It was really rewarding to see all my first graders be below the benchmark, and by Christmas. ... they were all doing more at a first-grade level,' McNally said.
The school district is using some of its Title I funds to bring this program here.
Those interested can look further at
