By Chelsea Vance | The Selma Times-Journal

At Monday’s Dallas County Board of Education, Keith High School English teacher Stanford Angion introduced a plan he believes will help students improve their reading.

The Community Collaborative Reading Initiative wants to increase academic achievement through daily reading. The program promotes the idea that students will want to read after seeing their role models reading more too.

The plan depends on parents, educators and community leaders for support.

“Reading is fundamental to all subjects. Every student needs to be able to read,” Angion said.

Students will be encouraged to check out library books and read for 20 minutes every day after school.

Parents will keep daily reading logs with signatures to mark the days that the children read.

The logs are to be turned in every Friday.

Teachers will collect and check reading logs and return them to students the following Monday. Logs are graded for homework credit each week.

“It is more of a tool to benefit the students than to hurt them. This is not a grade that will fail a student,” Angion said.

After students finish books, they will be required to take an Accelerated Reader test. Every student must take at least one AR test before the end of the school year.

The initiative will start Monday. On Thursday, Angion and the Community Collaborative Reading Coordinating Committee will introduce the plan to students, parents and faculty through a spirit rally.

“We will have a program overview where we introduce the details of the plan to the parents. We will take any questions they have and leave in a rally roundup to get make sure everyone is inspired to be a part of it,”Angion said.

The rally will start at 6:45 p.m. Rallies will be held to recognize students` progress every month. The student who scores the highest AR points for the month will be recognized from each grade level.

A student can only win the contest once. A class of each grade level with the highest average AR score will also be recognized.

Superintendent of the Dallas County School Board Don Willingham believes that the plan is an excellent program for Keith.

“Students don’t read as much as they used to. Sometimes when the children get home, there are so many other things that they will find more tempting than pulling out a book,” Willingham said.

He is looking into incorporating the initiative at other Dallas County Schools.