Joint Commissions hear update on Literacy Action Plan

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the March 9 joint meeting of the Alachua County Commission and Gainesville City Commission, Commissioners heard an update on their Literacy Action Plan.

Alachua County Reads

Teresa Beachy gave a presentation on Alachua County Reads, a “collective impact project for community-based providers that’s using expert tools and activities to support the literacy programs that are currently being promoted and conducted through the Alachua County Public Schools.”

Beachy said the group is working from the following definition: “Literacy is the ability to read and write at a level that allows full participation in one’s community and work,” and the goal is to create a “sustainable framework that addresses literacy throughout the community as an essential infrastructure that impacts economic development and quality of life across all populations.”

Since October 2025, the project has been active in two collaborative paths: The Literacy Catalyst project, led through the PEAK Literacy Partnership with the County, and the larger capacity-building efforts led through the Center for Nonprofit Excellence (CNE) with the Children’s Trust and the County. 

According to the presentation, these initial objectives and benchmarks have been met:

• Establishing programming and partners through PEAK Literacy leadership;
• Holding town hall meetings for community input;
• Securing marketing and communications specialists;
• Identifying and contracting with experts to design activities, training, and evaluation;
• Contracting with literacy specialists and consultants who can support capacity-building, implementation fidelity, and reporting accountability;
• Reaching out to the community partners to gauge interest and readiness; and
• Building the larger vision for implementation by September 2026.

PEAK Literacy and UFLI are providing the programming and training, and CNE is focusing on capacity-building, operations, and reporting; Beachy said there are about 24 providers who will begin building their funding requests for capacity this spring. CNE will also recruit an Advisory Council. 

PEAK Literacy

Leah Galione, the founder of PEAK Literacy, said she founded PEAK in 2019 as a small reading intervention program for 15 students at Williams Elementary. Since then, PEAK Literacy has grown to serve over 300 students across Alachua County. She said, “As everyone is well aware, we have a very stubborn literacy gap, especially along racial and socioeconomic lines. It’s remained unchanged for a very long time.” 

Galione said four realities guide every decision her organization makes. She said that teachers, families, and after-school staff are already operating at full capacity, so “any solution has to unburden them and fit within existing schedules, not add to them.” The second is that reading help has to feel different from the school day if they want students to show up and stay engaged. The third is to have more people directly supporting students, not more layers of administration, because resources are limited. The fourth is to create “a low-time, low-cost, high-dosage tutoring model grounded in research and strengthened through partnerships, but most importantly, it’s built to live within the community so it can continue serving the community.”

Students get individual lessons three to five times a week, in blocks of 15 minutes per day, and the work is largely done by community volunteers. She said, “We’re seeing measurable literacy gains across the students we serve, both in short-term progress and in longer-term growth.” 

In October, the Alachua County Commission granted $200,000 to PEAK Literacy, and they were able to add 11 new school and after-school sites and expand their at-home tutoring program; Galione said they’ve added 187 children since then, and they’ve started a pilot program for adults. 

County Commission Chair Ken Cornell: “You are literally doing God’s work, and it’s just really great… This Board of County Commissioners, we want to throw all of the resources, right now, you know, a moonshot effort… [Over the] next three years, we want to show results.”  

County Commission Chair Ken Cornell said, “I just want to say thank you. You are literally doing God’s work, and it’s just really great… This Board of County Commissioners, we want to throw all of the resources, right now, you know, a moonshot effort… [Over the] next three years, we want to show results.”  

In response to a question from Cornell about identifying the literacy needs at every school, Galione said they had not done that, but “we’re talking about a lot of kids… You have to use volunteers… We can build a pathway so that the teachers have support. It’s almost impossible for them to do direct instruction during the day, and when you’re in a fifth-grade classroom and you have to teach, they cannot go back and remediate that student, but a volunteer can.” She said her suggestion would be to start with the students who are on the upper end of scoring a “1” on assessment tests, “about to be a 2… Those students… likely just need a little bit of hand-holding to get them to the next level.”

10,000 students would benefit from direct instruction

In response to a question from City Commissioner Casey Willits about how many students need to progress to decrease the literacy gap, Galione said there are about 10,000 students who would benefit from direct instruction — one in three students. She said that if every UF incoming freshman were assigned to a student, “we could knock out that literacy gap in a couple years.”

City Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker asked Galione what the goal is, because she believes that “in setting that goal,… it demonstrates our level of commitment, but it also gives us something to strive for and keeps us accountable.” [Editor’s note: In November 2019, the Gainesville City Commission met with the School Board of Alachua County and set a goal of having all Alachua County third-graders reading at grade level within five years.]  

“I need $500,000”

Duncan-Walker asked, “When can we get to a goal of every school-aged child in Alachua County being literate?” Galione responded, “I think that depends on the amount of money that you’re willing to put forth.” Duncan-Walker said, “Tell us what you need,” and Galione responded, “I need $500,000.” Galione elaborated that for $430,000, she could expand to 425 students, and for $500,000, she could probably serve at least 600 students. Galione said, “We’re ready to take on the task and build something sustainable that is going to change this county. I will make you look really good.”

County Commissioner Anna Prizzia: “When Gail Johnson and I made the motion that we needed a comprehensive literacy assessment and literacy plan for our county, it was because less than 30% of our black children could read on grade level. Here we are, we’re like five years later, and still, less than 30% of our kids can read on grade level. And I am so excited about the progress we’re making…”

County Commissioner Anna Prizzia said, “When Gail Johnson and I made the motion that we needed a comprehensive literacy assessment and literacy plan for our county, it was because less than 30% of our black children could read on grade level. Here we are, we’re like five years later, and still, less than 30% of our kids can read on grade level. And I am so excited about the progress we’re making, I really am, and I’m so grateful that we are finally on this path, but… I feel like we’re still dancing around the edges, because, as you said, you’re an intervention and you’re a nonprofit, and you’re touching 320 kids, and we’re talking about a plan that is supposed to reach every child and teach them to read.”

Prizzia: “We’re talking about interventions for kids after school, 15 minutes a day, that can’t read… How do we get to a point where they don’t need that intervention?… It still feels like we’re missing the key piece, which is those kids sitting in a building, six to eight hours a day, with a $65 million budget and not learning to read, and we’re throwing $5 million here, and $500,000 here, and $100,000 there at it, trying to solve it… You need a million dollars? I’ll find it — like, we’ve got to get this moving for intervention.”

Prizzia continued, “I anticipated that this literacy collaborative would be about data transparency, about coming together with a plan that focused on the school day, that focused on the school district… I’m still left… feeling like we’re missing something. We’re missing that core piece. We’re talking about interventions for kids after school, 15 minutes a day, that can’t read… How do we get to a point where they don’t need that intervention?… I want to see the School Board at the table fully… It still feels like we’re missing the key piece, which is those kids sitting in a building, six to eight hours a day, with a $65 million budget and not learning to read, and we’re throwing $5 million here, and $500,000 here, and $100,000 there at it, trying to solve it… You need a million dollars? I’ll find it — like, we’ve got to get this moving for intervention… But it feels like it’s flipped inside out, at the moment.” [Editor’s note: The school district’s FY2026 All Funds budget is $585 million; the General Fund (operating) budget is $350 million.]

Mayor Harvey Ward: “I’m not saying we shouldn’t get involved in literacy. We should, but if nobody’s addressing economic development and growing good jobs in the eastern part of the county, and specifically in East Gainesville, and if nobody is addressing homelessness, we’re not going to get the results we want from any literacy program.”

Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward said, “This does not exist in a vacuum. Whether or not kids are able to learn effectively… is affected by a variety of other things, and… those other things are often what the Gainesville City Commission and the Board of County Commissioners can very readily affect and are working toward… I’m not saying we shouldn’t get involved in literacy. We should, but if nobody’s addressing economic development and growing good jobs in the eastern part of the county, and specifically in East Gainesville, and if nobody is addressing homelessness, we’re not going to get the results we want from any literacy program. It’s important to say that out loud. My understanding is that a minimum of 1,200 Alachua County public school students are homeless, and the guess is, more like 2,500. What that means is that between 8% and 10% of Alachua County public school children don’t have a stable place to sleep. I don’t know this, but I’m guessing that those 2,500 kids don’t read very well. So I want us to remain focused on those things, on affordability of housing and economic development.”

There were no motions because the agenda item was an update.