This week, KATC's Katie Lopez was able to read to a group of kindergarten students at Myrtle Place Elementary School here in Lafayette.
Thanks to our generous viewers, every child at the school will get four books for their library at home, and almost 200 more books will be donated to the school for the library and classrooms.
The books are part of KATC's participation in the E.W. Scripps Company's annual "If You Give a Child a Book" campaign. Scripps is our parent company, and it has been putting books in childrens' hands since 2016.
More than half a million books have been donated; every year the campaign seeks donations from across the country, coupled with donations from the Scripps family.
Studies show that 61 percent of low-income families find themselves in that situation — unable to afford books for their kids to read at home.
Reports show that kids unable to read at their grade level by the time they reach third grade, or 8 years old, are four times less likely to graduate from high school. With that, roughly one-third of the youngest school kids nationwide are behind on those reading benchmarks — substantially higher than before the pandemic.
