District recommends Heggerty and Fundations to strengthen early literacy

Unionville-Chadds Ford School District curriculum staff on May 12 recommended two early-literacy programs — Heggerty for phonemic awareness and Fundations for phonics and handwriting — and said the materials and associated professional development will be presented to the full board for a vote in June.

The recommendation comes after a yearlong review by a district committee made up of teachers, building and district administrators, and reading specialists, staff said. The committee narrowed its work to two priority areas: phonological/phonemic awareness and phonics/word recognition, which it identified as foundational to students’ later ability to "read to learn." Staff said the programs are intended for kindergarten through third-grade rollout, with Heggerty focused on K–1 and Fundations intended for K–3 use, including tiered intervention supports.

Katie Klingensmith, a Unionville elementary teacher who has used Heggerty in classrooms, described Heggerty as “explicit, structured, sequential” and said it is a short, auditory warm-up that helps teachers and families track progress. Klingensmith said Fundations builds on decoding with tactile, handwriting and spelling components and is grounded in Wilson Reading approaches; she described Fundations as usable both as Tier 1 instruction and a Tier 2 intervention.

District presenters said the recommended materials are not wholly new to the district: reading specialists and intervention teams have previously used portions of both programs and piloted elements during the school year. District staff emphasized that adoption would include continued, targeted professional development in structured-literacy practices for K–3 teachers.

Cost and next steps Staff said the Fundations program would cost $183,348 and Heggerty $6,281.14; those figures were described as budgeted within the district’s curriculum/instruction funds. Staff said both resources will be available for community review before the June board meeting when the district will take a formal vote.

No formal motion or vote was recorded at the May 12 meeting; presenters asked for questions and flagged the June board meeting as the scheduled voting item.