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reading program with Barnes & Noble, the local libraries and even a group called Therapy Dogs International
that provided therapy dogs for students in the summer program to read to as part of the “Paws for Readers”
program. Flynn said the summer reading program helped stop a summer slide among students from low-
income families.
“What we were seeing was that we were making gains during the school year, in many cases greater
gains among the poor and minorities, but then the problem was during the summer, when they were not in
school, they would slide back behind the other students,” Flynn said. “After we started the summer program,
the low-income students who participated have been able to maintain their grade-level advantages.
“The state’s poverty block grant has been very helpful,” Flynn said. “When General State Aid was cut, the
poverty grant helped offset those losses.”
There are six preschool programs in Freeport and Flynn estimated that as many as 200 of the 300
kindergarten students had attended one of the preschool programs. When funding for the preschool program
was reduced, Freeport kept the program going by using reserve funds that had been built up by years of
conservative budgeting.
Flynn credited the teachers union in Freeport with helping keep the program and other programs alive.
“Our union got it,” he said. “We were able to budget responsibly in part because of the reasonableness of
our union. We were able to maintain a rainy day fund, and it’s a good thing because it’s pouring out there.”
(Continued from page 7)
Poverty in the public education classroom
