COLUMBUS, Ohio — For the last 10 years, Future Ready Columbus has helped Franklin County area children prepare for school.
FRC works with local agencies and community members with a comprehensive plan called "Future Ready by Five" with the goal of getting 100% of Franklin County children ready for kindergarten by 2030.
The upcoming Ohio Kindergarten Readiness Assessment is next month and future students in Columbus have a long way to go to reach complete readiness.
“60% of our children are not ready for kindergarten as judged by the kindergarten readiness assessments,” said Mario Basora, the CEO of Future Ready Columbus. “And the problem is even worse when you look at children of color, where Black children at 73% are not ready for kindergarten and 82% of Latino kids in the county are not ready.”
Basora said the FRC and Columbus Metropolitan Library are working together to develop kits for children living in poverty. The kits include books, links and resources for the future student and their families to stay engaged.
“This costs us a total of $7 per book, which is the beauty of this simple solution,” said Basora. “We're excited about this because these toolkits have gone to serve kids all over the county. And because of their low costs, we've been able to serve a ton of kids throughout the regions, thousands and thousands of kids at this point.”
10TV and the TEGNA Foundation awarded Future Ready Columbus with a $5,000 grant, which according to Basora, will go directly into this initiative.
“We're going to take all $5,000 of that and devote it 100% to create as many of these [kits] as we can and get them out to families through the clinic,” Basora said.
For kindergarten readiness resources, visit education.ohio.gov. You can also find more information on Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library here.