Sometimes kids just need some extra professional support even in the best of programs.
To further that goal, Literacy Partners — Menlo Park (LPMP) recently provided $30,000 to AllFive, a highly lauded early childhood education service in the Ravenswood School District. The grant for the 2024-2025 academic year continues previous year funding to provide targeted onsite speech and language help for more than 80 toddlers and preschoolers already attending the program, explained Carol Thomsen, founder and executive director of AllFive.
The LPMP grant facilitates continuing onsite therapy by Ashlee Welday, M.S., CCC-SLP who provides one-on-one support for the young learners and serves as a resource for the teachers and staff whose goal is to get the kids ready for kindergarten, said Thomsen. In addition to screening for auditory challenges among the kids, Welday works with students who are catching up in English expression because of low exposure to conversation in the home, Thomsen said.
Exploring new worlds!
Ashlee’s targeted support has been vital to All Five’s ability to provide meaningful literacy-specific services for children experiencing neurodiversity challenges inhibiting literacy growth,” Thomsen explained in requesting the grant that LPMP’s board approved on July 22.
Karen Pace. All Five’s strategic progress manager, said kindergarten readiness is crucial in the Ravenswood District where 86 percent of families are low income, 57 percent non-English speaking, and only 11 percent of 3rd graders in recent years have read at grade level.
Group story time, books are the ultimate form of magic!
Tuition at AllFive is on a sliding scale starting at no fee, and Thomsen and Pace pointed out that the program at All Five is now so successful that parents from surrounding affluent communities, about 25 percent of total enrollment, pay fees of up to $2850 per month for the program. All Five is committed to bringing equity to early education, to the time when children’s brains grow the most, said Thomsen. She added that the program has shown excellent results for kids moving on to the Ravenswood District Schools, as well as public or private schools throughout the midpeninsula.
“Thank you for this incredibly generous funding in support of our community’s youngest learners,” Pace told the LPMP Board. “Your personal and collective efforts to support local literacy is truly changing lives and uplifting the community more broadly. All Five is fortunate for our organizations' mission alignment and your understanding of the power of education.”
Further information about All Five and its local program is available at: allfive.org.
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