UTAH STATE CAPITOL— In 2025, only 50.3% of third graders met grade-level proficiency in reading. That is according to a report from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, commissioned by the Clark and Christine Ivory foundation, showing that early childhood reading competency plays a critical role in future academic success.

SB241 Early Literacy, sponsored by Sen. Ann Millner, R-Ogden and Rep. Karen Peterson, R-Clinton, is intended to address the problem. The bill “establishes a framework of literacy interventions in kindergarten through grade 3 within the public education system.”

“We’ve done a lot of work, we passed SB127 three years ago that instituted the science of reading in our schools,” said Peterson. “We did a lot of training of teachers and we’re seeing results from that. But we’re still not seeing the results that we had hoped for. So this is the opportunity to say ‘OK, let’s go back and see what pieces are missing.’”

Peterson said what they’re finding is that there needs to be more trained paraprofessionals in the younger grades. “Not just a mom that can come and volunteer at the school or somebody retired that could read with kids. Those are great too but we need some people that are trained so that we can do a lot more small group instruction.”

Also a lot more interventions, she said. “Specifically for students that we identify are struggling and figure out how to wrap some services around that student, including their parents, letting their parents know what resources their student might need to stay on grade level through third grade.”

So this bill sets that up, said Peterson. “It sets up paraprofessionals and increases those in our schools. So we’re requesting some funding for that. Then the other thing it does is if a student is behind, then we create a reading team for that student, specifically for that student as an individualized reading plan.”

That team includes their parents, she said. “So their parents come in and we can let them know that they might want to take their kids in for dyslexia testing or some other things might be going on and here are some resources that we have in the community and these are things that might help you help your student.”

Peterson said they might pull them during reading time and move them to a different group. “Maybe we’re going to have them come a week or two in the summer so they don’t have so much summer slide. We’re going to try and figure out how we can do some of those things to help the students.”

That’s what the bill does, she said. “It sets that structure, it says ‘here are some resources to make those things available.’ Then it brings the parents in to talk about what things we can do to help the students.”

Peterson said she hopes they can get some funding. “That’s the biggest thing. We are going to move some funding we had in another pot over to help us. It’s like reallocating some existing funding that was going for some early literacy efforts so that should also help us.”

It’s a tight budget year, she said. “We hope we can get some additional resources.”

So if possible, Peterson said they're hoping to start pushing out paraprofessionals and all of that in the next year or so. “Then we’ll shift to the individual reading plans that we’re hoping to do in the next two years or so.”

It gives everyone some lead time to get everyone trained and get some best practices around what that might look like, she said. “The school districts will kind of figure that piece out for what they want it to look like in their district. They’ll have some flexibility.”

One of the things that the state has is the education stabilization account, said Peterson. “It’s one-time money but we can put it toward projects. For example the training component. Paying for training is a really good use. So if we can free up some other money to actually pay people’s salaries and then we can free up stabilization one-time money to pay for training I think that could be really good.”