The Richmond Community Foundation has announced it is awarding a $5,000 capacity-building grant to Community Alliance for Learning, to help us recruit volunteers for our expanding WriterCoach Connection program in the West Contra Costa County Unified School District.
This year we have grown WCC at El Cerrito High School, to include every 9th grader as well as students in the English Language Development (ELD) Levels 3 and 4 classes we served last year. This expansion to 400 students makes El Cerrito High the largest among the dozen schools we serve in four East Bay districts.
Meantime, we are preparing to launch WCC at our second West County site, Portola Middle School, next month. The pilot program at Portola will serve a mainstream 7th grade class and one ELD class, with the hope of further expansion at the school for 2012-13.
We now have our sights set on Richmond, and the vision of continuing to serve students and teachers in El Cerrito and expanding north in the District would not be possible without the generous support of the Richmond Community Foundation. We thank them!
Bob Menzimer
