Alachua County students are performing below grade level, according to Alachua County Library District.
Nearly 20% of adults in Alachua County are functionally illiterate, according to the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. The National Center for Education Statistics also estimates 19% of students in the county are reading at or below a Level 1 proficiency. Only about half of Alachua County’s K-12 students are reading on grade level, according to the 2025 Alachua County Comprehensive Literacy Needs Assessment, and the scores among minority students are even lower.
UF student volunteers are working to improve literacy rates before students fall behind.
Student-led Surrounded by Stories aims to improve literacy rates by visiting Alachua County schools and encouraging children to develop a love of reading, said Ijeoma Nwankwo, a 20-year-old UF nutritional science sophomore and the organization’s external vice president.
The organization focuses on vocabulary development, word recognition and spelling while exposing students to future career opportunities. It’s also partnered with the National Black Child Development Institute in Miami to donate books to children.
"We're trying to work on the foundational aspects of literacy and reading so that from a young age more kids grow an affinity for it," Nwankwo said.
Alachua County falls behind many other Florida counties in reading achievement, she said. Students of color are disproportionately affected, she added.
"Typically the students that we are serving are Black American children, African American children and Hispanic/Latino children," she said.
Having grown up in Palm Beach County, Florida, Nwankwo said she immediately noticed differences in available classroom resources after volunteering in Alachua County schools.
"I remember one of the schools we went out to didn't have a projector in the room, and I think those differences are a key aspect of why some of our kids are falling behind," she said.
She believes increased investment in schools is critical to improving literacy outcomes, she said.
"We need to make sure we are allocating money and government funding to build up the next generation," Nwankwo said.
Gianmarcos Politi, a 19-year-old Valencia College mechanical engineering sophomore, works as a tutor at Huntington Learning Center in Orlando. By tutoring students preparing for the SAT, he said he’s seen firsthand how limited reading skills can affect academic performance.
"[Myolder students] tend to struggle a lot on the the reading sections of the SAT as well as word problems in the math section," Politi said. "They definitely don't know how to read a lot of words; their vocabulary isn't as big as it should be for someone their age."
Working with students from a variety of cultural backgrounds, Politi said he has observed that native English speakers often struggle more than students learning English as a second language.
"English comes so naturally [to them] that they don't really pay attention to the rules," he said.
Politi said he believes literacy serves as the foundation for success in every aspect of life.
"It affects your school, your career, your relationships with other people and even with yourself in everyday life," he said.
Despite the challenges many students face, Politi said he encourages them not to become discouraged.
"Everybody learns at different rates," he said. "Professors always emphasize that a question isn't stupid if it's a question you don't understand."
Joshua Harris, an English teacher at Law Enforcement Officers Memorial High School in Miami, said cultivating a love of reading has become one of his personal missions.
"I've tried to make it a passion of mine to make sure that minorities are reading as much as possible," Harris said.
Harris incorporates literature into his classroom through book clubs and monthly reading programs. He said he believes reading develops skills that extend well beyond academics.
"Historically, one of the things people don't realize about reading is that it fosters critical thinking, decision-making and imagination," Harris said.
Growing up in southern Georgia, Harris said he understands many of the barriers minority families face in encouraging literacy.
Parents in minority communities often struggle to balance providing for their family and setting time aside to foster a child’s love for reading, he said.
Today's technology presents another challenge, he added.
"A lot of children don't like to read today,” he said. “They find it boring because they're stimulated by visuals."
Harris said he believes expanding access to books and literacy programs can help address longstanding educational inequities.
Historically, literacy belonged to the elite, Harris said. The working class was socioeconomically stunted due to low literacy rates.
For that reason, he said, organizations like Surrounded by Stories play an important role in supporting minority communities.
Harris recalled receiving free books at a young age through Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, an organization she founded to foster literacy rates in children. His son benefited from the same program years later. At the time, both he and his wife were attending school, receiving food assistance and working three part-time jobs.
The free books helped his family during hard times, he said.
"To have somebody giving us a free book, it was a way that I could sit down with my son, as a newborn and then as a toddler, and read to him," Harris said. "It was a lift of a financial burden."
Contact Kathia Montenegro at KMontenegro@alligator.org.
