Inside a Successful District Literacy Overhaul: Grants, Teams, and Long-Term Planning

Even if a district does everything right and knows what to do to fix their literacy programs, there is still the challenge of funding—securing it, building buy-in, and creating something that lasts beyond the grant cycle.

West Warwick Public Schools in Rhode Island cracked the code. Under the leadership of Jim Monti, former Director of Educational Reform, Compliance & Technology, the district didn’t just win competitive grants—they built a sustainable literacy infrastructure that’s still thriving. Their approach combined strategic vision, smart team-building, and a relentless focus on long-term implementation over quick wins.

West Warwick received funding to implement a new Tier 1 curriculum through a Comprehensive Literacy State Development (CLSD) Grant. West Warwick used ESSER II & III funds to implement a Walk to Intervention Tier 2 program using 95 Phonics Screener for Intervention™, and 95 Phonics Lesson Library™ kits. As an early innovation partner, Jim Monti also led his district in the adoption of 95 Literacy Intervention System—a comprehensive digital solution designed to effectively diagnose deficits, deliver targeted instruction, and move students out of intervention as soon as possible.

In this post, Jim Monti explains the groundwork that led to successful funding efforts and Tier 1 and Tier 2 implementations.

What you’ll learn:

• Organizing the work for success: Three essential teams to create for success in funding, literacy planning and implementation, and professional development
• Implementing a new intervention model: How West Warwick developed a shared understanding across 110 elementary school teachers
• Planning for long-term sustainability: Building systems that deliver lasting literacy success

Organizing the work

The grant leadership team and literacy planning team

We created a grant leadership team—we identified who was on the team, so it was central office staff, all of our building-level administrators, and professional learning people. We knew we wanted our elementary school principals to have considerable content knowledge in literacy.

We structured the grant so the leadership team was the one who developed all of the professional learning for the rest of the team, and they delivered it. Our principals, central office administrators, and professional learning team developed all of that professional learning content together. We actually mapped that out—the first 7 months of the work that we did was just learning.

Based on our vision and goals, we built all of the professional learning into the grant itself. We developed what we called the literacy planning team with 60 K-12 educators on that team. We only had 370 certified staff at the time, so that represented a good chunk of them. We included middle school and high school. We didn’t want to just stop at the elementary level—we wanted to push it forward.

ELA curriculum support team

We also developed a Curriculum Support Team (CST) as part of the grant. We had a grade-level representative from the Curriculum Support Team at every grade and every school. As we moved into the new curriculum and the new work that we were doing in years two, three, and four, the CST leaders ran weekly or biweekly meetings with their grade-level peers—we funded weekly or biweekly 45-60 minute meetings.

In the first year, it was all about unpacking the new curriculum. What do we need to know about this? They were learning and leading their peers in that, but then, after the first year of full implementation, it quickly shifted to: We have these kids who have really high needs. How are we going to support them? Oh, we need to develop an intervention model.

Implementing a new intervention model

We understood that there were some things that we needed to do together. To begin, we had everyone read Susan Hall’s book 10 Success Factors for Literacy Intervention: Getting Results with MTSS in Elementary Schools. We had 110 elementary school teachers read that in a virtual environment, and interact with the text in discussion groups so that we all got on the same page about what we needed to do for intervention.

Our first goal was to get a new curriculum and implement it. We went through the same process for the next goal which was to develop the right interventions.

The process of reading the Hall book, plus the weekly/biweekly meetings, allowed us to get on the same page and get everyone ready for a new intervention model.

We had tried time and time again and failed at intervention consistently for five years. We had to make sure that we did the right work this time around. They were all eager to get started by the time they all finished. We actually had them read Susan Hall’s book in the summer. So, in September, when I said, “Hey, we’re ready to purchase 95 Phonics Screener for Intervention™ kits,” they were enthusiastic and ready to go. And by November, we were already running intervention groups. Now they have those intervention groups running by the end of September.

Program management and literacy sustainability for the long term

Altogether, we received two million dollars in grants. We’ve seen great results with the interventions and the new Tier 1 curriculum that we have implemented. This success all goes back to our work creating a clear vision and goals with all the steps defined to get us there. So now, it would be unconscionable for the district not to continue funding the work.

The big questions we needed to address next were: How can we sustain the work we’ve done, but also push deeper so we can get to that really sophisticated work we still need to do? How are we going to operationalize this over time? 

Even though all of the original funding has gone away, the district is still doing intervention work. Now, if they start to see a group of kids that they’re really not meeting through the curriculum and they’re finding that those students might be truly dyslexic and need additional support, they consider how they can support the students better in the future. At this point, they might identify another grant they can utilize to get the additional training for teachers.

We did that through ESSER funding, which put us in a really good position. Rhode Island state law mandated that all teachers complete a 60-hour training on the fundamentals of reading and we also helped teachers obtain their structured literacy certifications and their dyslexia certifications.

Now in our contract, if you have those certifications, you get an extra $2,500 stipend each year. So we kick-started some people, and others are continuing that work. And we’ve made it operational-—we’re giving them a small stipend incentive to continue doing that work themselves. When you have a really well-established vision, with incremental goals to achieve it, then you even get to refine that.

Rhode Island did get an extension on their CLSD grant. Many of the CLSD funds support literacy coaching in the classroom. One of our goals was to increase the number of literacy coaches we have, because we had just two for K-12. One handled K-5 and one handled 6 through 12. So now we’ve increased the amount of coaching. Because again, it’s really about embedded professional learning now, and helping people get more nuanced not only in their Tier 1 work but also in what they’re doing in Tier 2.

A lot of times, Title I funds end up getting utilized for staffing. In our district, they funded reading specialists in each of the high-need buildings at a higher percentage of reading specialists. So, if the district made a commitment of two reading specialists at each of our elementary schools that had 400 to 500 kids, the high-need buildings might have four or five specialists in them. This helped tremendously with the interventions.

When you are singular in mind with everyone, and you’ve committed to the work together, it allows you to stay focused and not distracted by shiny things. We have always found the money, either through local, federal, or state opportunities that we could take advantage of. Having all of your groundwork articulated and clearly available to people is key. Then, when it comes time for that grant application, you’re not trying to write everything. Because you’ve already worked on it for such a long time, it writes itself.

Begin with a blueprint. Get our 5-Step Quick Start Guide

In our previous post with Jim Monti, “Leveraging strategic funding for literacy success,” we put together a 5-step Quick Start Guide based on Jim’s advice and shared the goals West Warwick outlined in the beginning of their funding journey that led to their success.

If you missed it, read the first part here and download the 5-Step Quick Start Guide.