The city of Southgate is strengthening its commitment to its youngest residents through an $8,000 investment in Read Ready Southgate.
Read Ready Southgate is a communitywide effort to help every child enter kindergarten prepared to succeed.
Southgate Mayor Jim Hamberg and the Southgate City Council allocated $4,000 in city funding to Read Ready Southgate. That local commitment, combined with the completion of the city’s comprehensive annual Read Ready plan submitted Aug. 1, qualified Southgate for an additional $4,000 investment from the Read Ready Network.
“Southgate is demonstrating what it looks like when a community makes its youngest children a priority,” said Jenny Watson, vice president of early learning and family power at EducateNKY in a press release. “The city’s investment is about more than funding, it shows a shared commitment among local leaders, educators and community partners to reach families early and ensure more children arrive at kindergarten ready to learn and thrive.”
Read Ready Southgate’s place-based plan establishes a coordinated approach to identifying and engaging families with young children and connecting them with programs, resources and support. Priorities include expanding family programming and early learning resources, increasing preschool enrollment and early literacy participation, and connecting families with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, The Basics and Footsteps2Brilliance.
The plan also calls for tracking family participation and kindergarten readiness data to measure progress and guide future efforts. The city, schools, libraries, early childhood providers, health care organizations and community partners will work together to implement the plan and strengthen the network of support available to Southgate families.
Read Ready is EducateNKY’s place-based early childhood initiative focused on building communities in which families can easily access the relationships, resources and opportunities children need during their earliest years.