We’ve added a new category to the “Bright Spots” section of our website – along with Bright Spots School and Bright Spots Programs, we are now featuring Bright Spots Communities. This month, we featured the work of four different areas:

• In Worcester, MA  four public elementary schools that had no or limited library facilities due to long-ago budget issues will each house a children’s services branch of the Worcester Public  Library.
• In Stockton, CA the area’s Reach Out and Read program reaches about 6,000 children who receive care in 12 public and private medical offices serving low-income families. The program also distributes 11,000 children’s books a year.
• In New Britain, CT between 2012 and 2013, the percentage of chronically absent students dropped – for kindergartners, from 30 to 18 percent; first graders from 24 to 13 percent; second graders from 19 to 14; and third graders from 15 to 11 percent.
• In Vero Beach, FL the Moonshot Moment, an early literacy campaign is aiming to have 90 percent of children reading on grade level by the end of third grade in 2018.

Bright Spots showcase the work that Grade-Level Reading communities are doing to make progress on school readiness, school attendance and summer learning by 2016. You can nominate a Bright Spot by emailing Betsy Rubiner.