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We are helping EPL raise funds for ABC Boosters:

Help EPL fill this budget gap.

This successful program needs your support in 2025! This program has been a successful partnership between EPL and District 65 since 2012, with over 600 pre-k students participating. In the past, District 65 has made a grant to help support this program. This year, because of their budget cuts, District 65 is not able to provide this grant. Because EPL believes in this program, we are taking on these costs for this summer. We now have an unexpected budget gap of $20,000* to continue ABC Boosters in 2025 as we have in past years. Help us fill this budget gap and give ABC Boosters a well-deserved and needed boost of its own in 2025!

*Unrestricted donations will be directed to supporting the ABC Boosters program costs. Once these goals are met, donations will support additional children's programming at EPL.

The Back Story of ABC Boosters:

What does it mean to be kindergarten ready?

This summer, 60 pre-k students from Evanston/Skokie School District 65 will find out when they participate in the ABC Boosters program.

With support and training from the Evanston Public Library (EPL) staff and District 65 teachers, 30 high school students from the Mayor's Summer Youth Program will become "boosters" and show the rising kindergarten students what it means to be in school. Every day during the program, the teen boosters will work one-on-one with their designated pre-k student and mentor them in the fundamentals of school -- everything from sitting in a circle and following rules to key literacy skills, like site word recognition and phonetics.

ABC Boosters fills a knowledge gap.

Research has shown that the achievement gap in school appears as early as kindergarten. Early interventions in pre-kindergarten (pre-k) are an effective way to combat the achievement gap in elementary school.

The goal of the ABC Booster’s program is clearly defined in that after participating in the program, students will 1) increase the number of upper and lowercase letters they can identify by an average of +5 letters; and 2) increase their word knowledge by +5 words. In 2024, the average increase in alphabet recognition was +8 letters, and the average word knowledge growth was +6.