July 13, 2017 - Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino volunteered Wednesday for JCY-Westchester Community Partners’ Summer Reading Buddies at Yonkers’ Riverfront Library. He worked one-on-one with a first-grade student on a summer reading assignment and also read to an audience of pre-K students.
Summer Reading Buddies is a six-week program that helps Westchester’s children combat the “summer reading slide,” when literacy skills that are learned over the school year are lost over the summer. The summer reading slide is one of the most significant causes of the achievement gap between youth from lower income and higher income families, according to JCY. The program is funded in part by the Westchester County Youth Bureau.
At the program, volunteers are paired with children (preschool - grade six) to read one-on-one or in small groups, build literacy skills and complete their summer reading assignments. Resources are provided to parents to foster literacy in the home. In 2016, more than 1,000 students and 385 volunteers participated.
Summer Reading Buddies is run by JCY-Westchester Community Partners, a division of the Family Service Society of Yonkers, in partnership with the Yonkers Public Library, the City of Yonkers, Westchester County and Con Edison. The program is available at the Yonkers Riverfront Library, the Mount Vernon Public Library and the Ossining Public Library.