Ceirra Dean, 4, is learning to read at Oak Harbor’s Early Childhood Education Assistance Programs (ECEAP) preschool.

Now that ECEAP has received $20,000 worth of grant money to enhance its students’ literacy with the Raising a Reader program, Ceirra should have all the reading skills necessary to allow her to start kindergarten with confidence.

Kathleen Couture, education coordinator for Whidbey Island ECEAP, said the United Way of Island County recently gave ECEAP a $10,000 literacy grants, making it the second $10,000 grant United Way has given ECEAP in the past two years.

United Way, which is a community based and governed organization which activates resources and partnerships to meet community needs, applied for these funds from the Foster and Verizon Foundations.

Kathy Norton, the executive director for United Way of Island County, said both foundations earmark funds for implementing and advancing literacy programs.

Norton said she also feels improving literacy in children improves a community. For this reason, she and others at United Way of Island County chose to apply for the grants and give them to local schools or organizations dealing with literacy.

Couture said that two years ago, ECEAP did have a lack of sufficient literacy teaching curriculum and equipment, so when United Way approached her about enhancing the school’s literacy program, she said she jumped at the opportunity.

With the grant money, Couture said ECEAP teachers were able to invest in and implement the Raising a Reader program for their preschoolers.

Couture said the Raising a Reader program is a school-based program to promote literacy within families and in the home. And with this program, ECEAP received books, supplies, classroom equipment, tote bags, educational videos, literacy games and teaching aids for each of the school’s six classrooms.

Now, ECEAP teachers send their students home every Tuesday with a small red tote bag that holds four books. These books range from toddler books to youth books, in English or bilingual, thus enabling a wider range of families and family members to become involved in family reading time.

Ceirra is only one of the 240 ECEAP children that bring their little red bags home to share with their parents and siblings.

Tami Herman, Ceirra’s mother, said her daughter looks forward seeing which new books her bag holds.

“She just likes different stories and different pictures,” Herman said. “She likes all books.”

At home, Ceirra makes up stories from the pictures and tells them to her little brother, Dominic, 2.

“It is not only for the ECEAP child,” Couture said. “It’s for the whole family.”

Since ECEAP purchased everything necessary to implement the Raising a Reader program in 2004, this year teachers only had to purchase refresher kits to replace any books that were lost or damaged last year.

With the remaining funds, Couture said she purchased extra items to improve the school’s ability to equip children above and beyond the necessary literacy skills for kindergarten.

Each classroom got a heavy duty recorder, six pair of headphones, 65 books on tape, phonetic games, storytime books and other items. Each teacher also received teaching materials, and the school got a literacy screening test.

“We can sit a child down at the age of four, read them a story, ask them a series of questions and decide which level of literacy they are at, to decide which children need help and which children are doing really well,” she said.

Couture said the grants have been godsends, since ECEAP is state funded, rather than federally funded and runs on a small budget. She said improvements to school programs, such as implementing Raising a Reader, have a way of boosting teacher morale, because they know their students will leave their facility well equipped to face whatever comes next.

“Already, Raising a Reader has touched 240 students. That’s not counting all the family siblings, all the family parents, all the other people that have been read to — the fact that this equipment is now ours, and it will be here for the next five or six classes to come,” Couture said. “This could possibly touch in the thousands.”

She said right now, ECEAP can boast a very high quality literacy program.

“We may get into mathematics next — you never know,” she said.