KLSD Board hears about literacy program selection

By JEFF MORRIS

The Katonah-Lewisboro Board of Education got an update on the district’s literacy program at its Dec. 18 meeting.

Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Julia Drake described the process that the Literacy Leadership Team has been following during this school year, which led to a decision on new literacy programs that it will begin implementing in September 2026.

She traced some of that progress back to the appointment in July of Margaret Konrad as director of learning. That newly-created position was described as including “direct involvement in instructional and curricular improvement efforts that elevate student achievement and well-being.”

Konrad is one member of the Literacy Leadership Team. The LLT also includes an external literacy expert: Molly Ness, a former classroom teacher, reading researcher, and teacher educator, who served on the New York State Dyslexia Task Force, the Board of Directors for the International Literacy Association, and Reading League, and co-authored the KLSD literacy audit, which was conducted by Sterling Literacy in the first months of 2025. Ness is experienced in leading districts through curriculum adoption processes, advising school systems of research-based reading instruction. 

Drake is also a member of the LLT, along with Interim Assistant Superintendent for Special Education Ybelize Pilarte; all K-12 KLSD building principals; all K-12 KLSD ELA curriculum leaders; a KLSD instructional coach; and additional KLSD curriculum leader representatives.

The purpose of the LLT, formed in response to feedback from the district’s literacy audit, was to establish a unified K–12 approach to literacy, and vet high-quality instructional materials for use in KLSD. Its immediate focus was to adopt K–5 high-quality literacy curriculum for the 2026-27 school year, with a long-term goal of deciding on unified K-8 or K–12 instructional materials.

The team published a plan for the year, showing the dates on which it intends to meet. As each meeting took place, Drake updated the plan with what was accomplished at each.

According to Drake, LLT held its first meeting to establish priorities on Oct. 14. At that meeting it developed a comprehensive list of priorities.

At the team’s Oct. 20 meeting, it reviewed Science of Reading research and selection tools, began a glossary of terms, and explored a collection of programs with Ness.

In November, the district launched an FAQ section of the Literacy Curriculum webpage, which included a link to add questions, which Drake said helped the team understand what some of the needs were.

At its Nov. 5 meeting, LLT again met with Ness for a closer look at programs and instructional materials, and evaluated them using its criteria, including The Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines. It reviewed independent evaluations, examined alignment with LLT priorities, and developed responses to the community FAQs.

On Nov. 12, with Ness, LLT met with publishers, and educators from other districts, to deepen its curriculum review, gather insights on implementation and outcomes, and narrow the list of potential K-5 literacy programs in preparation for a final recommendation.

As part of its selection process, LLT made use of Scarborough’s Reading Rope, a model created by Hollis Scarborough, an American psychologist and literacy expert. It shows the interconnectedness and interdependency of language comprehension and word recognition skills and how those skills weave together to create increasingly strategic and automatic skilled reading. The rope is composed of two main strands: language comprehension, including background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge; and word recognition, including phenological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition.

At its last meeting of 2025 on Dec. 11, again with Ness, the team reviewed word-identification programs needed to support language comprehension programs, interviewed publishers and examined samples, considered implications for broader implementation across the current curricula, and arrived at a final decision.

After considering over 20 curriculum programs focused on several different areas, LLT chose Fishtank ELA. The team decided that Fishtank was most closely aligned with reading research: it has a focus on knowledge building, vocabulary, language structures, and reasoning; has coherent, knowledge-rich units and complex, full-length texts; and has embedded, explicit instructional routines that grow comprehension. And, it met all the priorities that LLT had established on Oct. 14.

However, Drake noted, while the Fishtank Plus Program meets the language comprehension portion of the Reading Rope model, that left LLT with the need for a separate word recognition program. The team continued its search for the most robust word recognition offering, and did further evaluations on Dec. 11. It arrived at a choice of UFLI Foundations for grades K-2, Morphemes for Little Ones for grade three, and Morpheme Magic for grades four to five. Konrad said the choice of Morpheme Magic was in response to the literacy audit’s recommendation to bring a word recognition program into upper grade classrooms. She said it would be relatively easy to implement, taking only 10 to 15 minutes per day, “so we thought it was a nice sort of stepping stone into word recognition in the upper grades in a really impactful way but without taking over a ton of time.” She added that because Morphemes don’t need to follow a specific sequence, “we can tailor our instruction and handpick which Morpheme steps match the curriculum at each grade level.”

The LLT’s next steps, outlined by Drake, include adapting the curriculum decision to KLSD budget conditions and development; preparing for new curriculum implementation in September 2026; and continuing the search for secondary-level high quality instructional materials.

“Our work isn’t done. So we’re going to meet throughout the rest of this [school] year, in more of a subcommittee approach, separating all of the various aspects of the implementation work that lives in the elementaries,” said Drake. “Our hope is to continue, and at this time next year have a similar report for you for middle school high quality instructional materials, possibly going up into high school as well.”