Program helps students hit the books in Yacolt

What: School library open after school for families to check out books, practice math and reading on computers, play board games.

When: 4:15 to 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Where: Yacolt Primary School, 406 W. Yacolt Road, Yacolt.

Information: http://bit.ly/17ZjT2C

YACOLT — Carrying a bag bulging with kids’ books, Karen Homola, 31, and six of her children entered the library at Yacolt Primary School ready to choose more books.

When the school day ends at Yacolt, the learning doesn’t stop. After school on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, the school’s common area becomes the Parent Educational Resource Center. It’s an opportunity for area families to check out children’s books, practice reading and math games on the library’s computers, and access the Internet. In October, 134 people came to the PERC program at Yacolt Primary.

Karen Homola’s daughter Alexa, 6, a first-grader at Yacolt Primary, is the reason the family has become regulars at PERC. Karen learned about the after-school resource at a parent-teacher conference in October with Alexa’s teacher, Heidi Massie. Alexa was struggling a bit in reading and needed more practice.

“Looking in our bookshelf at home, I didn’t know which books would be at her level,” Karen said.

Massie had suggested the family visit the school during its PERC hours. The school’s books are arranged by reading level. That makes it easy for Alexa to choose new books each week that won’t be too hard or too easy.

As Karen set down her load of books, her children made a beeline for the shelves to find new books to take home.

“I want you to get level D and E,” Karen instructed Alexa. “Two of each.” But then she added: “Three level D books.”

Setting her books on a table, Alexa began looking at them: “In a Dark, Dark Wood,” “Timmy” (about a cat), “On a Cold, Wet Night,” “People on the Beach,” “Worms,” “This is My Family” and a Kids Can Read book in which a parent reads one page, and the child reads the next.

After Alexa’s siblings selected books at their reading levels, four of the Homola kids sat at the school computers and started practicing reading and math with the school’s online programs.

Remote and rural

Although Yacolt Primary School is tucked into the rural, remote northern reaches of the Battle Ground Public Schools district, it has 810 students in kindergarten through fourth grade. That makes it not only the largest primary school in the district, but the district’s third-largest school. Only the two high schools — Battle Ground and Prairie — have more students.

About 70 percent of the Yacolt students’ families are part of the Apostolic Lutheran Church community, said Principal Ken Evans. With that demographic comes large families, including the Homolas, who have nine children: Troy, 11; Jarrett, 10; Karly, 9; Janae, 8; Alexa, 6; Land, 5; Brock, 3; Mylan, 2; and Lainey, 1.

Two learning support instructional assistants, Sue Wolden and Sandra Clark, run Yacolt’s PERC program. The computers and Internet access for the educational games are the most popular PERC activities.

If larger families have computers at home, they might all share one computer, Clark said, adding that many of the students don’t have Internet access at home. That makes it tough to get time practicing math and reading skills with online programs the district uses, she said.

Yacolt Primary is the only school in the Battle Ground district that offers PERC, which is funded by federal money from the Title I program. Title I provides financial assistance to schools with high percentages of low-income families to help children meet state academic standards. The program requires that 1 percent of the money pays for an activity that engages parents in their children’s education.

With 43.4 percent of Yacolt students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, the school’s poverty rate is 6 percent higher than the district average of 37.5 percent.

From Yacolt, it’s a drive to reach other library resources. Although there is the small, self-service Yacolt Public Library in the city hall and old jail, it’s more than 14 miles to the large, full-service Battle Ground Public Library, part of the Fort Vancouver Regional Library System. PERC fills an educational gap.

Gathering a new stack of books for her children to borrow, Karen said that having books to read at home that are at the right level has helped Alexa improve.

“Alexa’s teacher said she has bumped up a level,” Homola said.