Virginia Programs Promote Reading

Americans are familiar with using a vending machine to get a drink, a snack, even live bait. But in Southwest Virginia, one school district is using such machines to deliver food for thought: books.

Henry County Public Schools recently unveiled vending machines that will be available in all nine of its elementary schools and will be stocked with books that students can keep. Students earn tokens by being well-behaved and can exchange them for reading material.

“This is one step that we can take to make reading more fun, to make reading more accessible, and to just instill that lifelong love of reading and learning,” Henry County Superintendent Amy Blake-Lewis told WDBJ. The district’s students will be able to use the vending machines when they return to classes this week.

Statewide, Virginians can participate in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. The program promises to provide a free book every month from birth until age 5, when a child starts kindergarten.

A 2024 state law established a statewide program, but it has taken some time to get it up and running.

“Any time you do anything that involves government, it is not the fastest moving thing,” then-Republican Del. Carrie Coyner told VPM last year. “At this moment, our friends at Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, our local affiliates and our state department of education are still working out all the details of that underlying mechanism by which we put that statewide plan into place.”

Local districts and organizations are stepping up to support the concept. Recently, the Junior League of the Roanoke Valley teamed up with Roanoke’s school system and Vinton Baptist Church to unveil an Imagination Library program.

“The best way to ensure long-term literacy is to make sure that kids get a great, early start,” the Junior League’s Courtney Watson told WFXR. “The earlier you can develop that passion for reading and that interest in reading, the more likely they are later on in their education to pursue it on their own.”

There are almost 100 locally managed Imagination Library programs across the Commonwealth.

In Hampton Roads, REACH bills itself as the area’s “food bank of books.” The program was founded in 1998 and has expanded to partner with more than 180 teachers, programs, and agencies to provide age-appropriate reading material for students through high school.

“Our program, The Big Free Bookstore, is the only one in the U.S. that distributes new books, school supplies, and hosts activities at no cost, serving thousands of families annually,” REACH says on its website.

The summer break also meant many reading programs were underway in Virginia. Even though school starts soon in many districts, some of these programs run through the month or even into September.

Virginia students lost ground on reading tests during COVID-19. However, they are making a strong comeback. The Commonwealth ranked 10th among all states in reading recovery on this year’s Education Scorecard. However, there is still a long way to go.

The report found that the average student in Virginia performs about 0.4 grade equivalents lower than the 2022 level in reading and around 0.68 grade equivalents lower than the 2019 level in reading.

“In this report, we highlight the work of a small group of state leaders who have started digging out by changing how students learn to read, and 108 local school districts that are finding ways to get students learning again,” Tom Kane, the head of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, told WRIC.

Virginia’s innovative approaches may help students speed their recovery.