MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) – Summer may bring sunshine and playtime, but it also brings a drop in reading for many children — a slide that can result in significant learning loss by the time school starts again.
“For a student, that’s frustrating. For a teacher, they’ve got to reteach,” said Ann Sikes, president of the Montgomery Education Foundation.
Educators warn that without regular reading during the summer, students — especially those in underserved communities — can fall behind academically.
“By the time they reach high school, they could be multiple grades behind. Just from that gap compounding over the summers,” said Suzy Harris, director of Summer Adventures in Learning, or SAIL.
That’s why SAIL partnered with the Montgomery Education Foundation to launch SAIL Reads—an initiative aimed at getting books into the hands of students through summer camps at the MAP Center, YMCA, and Montgomery County Parks and Recreation.
According to a 2014 study cited by Sikes, Montgomery and several surrounding counties are considered “book deserts”—areas where children have limited or no access to printed reading material.
“61% of low-income families had zero books in the home,” she said.
Sikes emphasized that engaging children in reading begins with offering books they can relate to.
“They need to see themselves in the books,” she said. “They need to be windows to the outside where they get to see more, and sliding glass doors where they actually step into other worlds or feel a part of.”
Since its launch in 2020, more than 50,000 books have been distributed in the Montgomery area . So far this summer, more than 12,000 books have already been delivered.
The program can be found at several summer camps in Montgomery, but read-aloud books can be accessed online at any time.
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