Reading Is Fundamental Cut from Federal Budget: Take Action

A reading program that embodies the ethos of our educational building blocks in Madison Metropolitan School District is on President Bush's chopping block for fiscal year (FY)2009 and they need your help.

This action will take less than five minutes of your time.  Please let your members of Congress know you care about providing literacy for all children and ask them to sign the RIF Dear Colleague letter.

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The program is a national gem -  Reading is Fundamental or RIF -  provides 4.5 million children with 16 million new, free books each year all the while supporting parents and guardians to read to their kids as well as provide on-line support for literacy activites.

Here's a few FACTS:

RIF is the oldest (40 years) and largest children's and family nonprofit literacy organization in the United States.

RIF is one of the few internet sites for children and families that supports literacy and is easily accessible in Spanish.

RIF has been a part of own schools in Madison in the past few years.  Schools that have benefited from RIF include Hawthorne Elementary, Leopold Elementary, Lindbergh Elementary and Lowell Elementary.  They are part of the 360+ sites which have distributed over 300,000 books to close to 80,000 kids in Wisconsin alone!

RIF programs combine three essential elements to foster children's literacy, especially for those underserved children from birth to age 8: reading motivation, family and community involvement, and the excitement of choosing free books to keep.

You can help save RIF by contacting your congressional representative and your Senators.  All three representatives for the 2nd Congressional District (Madison) have yet to sign on to save RIF.

Education Policy blogger and author, Stuart Nachbar wrote a wonderful, brief post on the reasons to keep RIF funded.  He says, "...in 2006, the last year that federal data is available, RIF distributed books to nearly 4.5 million children—using less federal money than the year before.

That’s hardly an example of a failing program; in fact, one would have to wonder what RIF could have accomplished with an extra million or two."

The International Reading Association, a nonprofit professional organization dedicated to promoting high levels of literacy for all since 1954 has a post about the history of RIF and its cut from the proposed Federal Budget.

Please ask your representatives in Congress to appropriate $26 million to fund RIF’s book distribution program for some 4.6 million underserved children and families in fiscal year 2009. The funding is critical to support our reading motivational programs at nearly 20,000 locations nationwide.

Don't forget to spread the word!