District receives $5,000 grant

Superintendent: ‘We want to expose our kids to potential careers’

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry awarded a $5,000 grant to Kutztown Area School District to be used for the development of college and career readiness for Kutztown students.

The Berks Business Education Coalition had awarded grant funds this summer as seed money to develop more internships at the high school level.

“We secured that and were able to expand our internship offers,” Kutztown Superinten-

dent George Fiore reported to the Kutztown School Board during their meeting on Sept. 5.

“This weekend, we were awarded $5,000 additionally from the career readiness mini-grant from the Department of Labor and Industry. That [grant] will further our program of developing college and career readiness for our kids. What it really means is, how are we providing experiences for kids to get access to college and careers much earlier?”

KASD developed a county-wide system that will be established this year.

“This has become very large, and we’re on the front end of it,” said Fiore. “We can all agree, we want to expose our kids to potential careers.”

According to Fiore, the district’s decision to encourage college and career readiness was steps ahead of the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s requirement for benchmarks in career standards to be met throughout a student’s time in the school system.

“We’re talking about 75 hours by the time a student graduates, 25 hours by 5th grade, and 50 hours by 8th grade in career exploration and the development of portfolios. This is far more intense than what we have.”

Kutztown students began their school year on Aug. 28.

“Part of the welcome back is some changes that we have,” said Fiore. “One is the focus in elementary school on literacy and both schools, Greenwich and Kutztown Elementary, have individual reading time for our students. There’s a tremendous amount of research that shows, just like with many skills, the more you do it, the better you get, especially with reading. We want to create a culture of readers at a very young age.”

Fiore said faculty read with students.

In other news, after 24 inches of rain delayed the completion of the high school’s stadium project, the sod in the new stadium has been installed, with the installation of the track to follow in the coming weeks.