The Bogalusa City Schools recently received additional funding of more than $200,000 to improve its reading curriculum.

Lisa Tanner, superintendent for the BCS, said that the federal grant is through the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy (SRCL) program. It was awarded to BCS last week, following a vote by the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The BCS received more than $200,000 to work in three different age spans — birth to 5 years old, kindergarten to second grade, and third grade to fifth grade. This grant money will be used to train teachers in reading instruction for the district’s students.

In addition, Tanner said that BCS would be implementing additional curriculum and training to aid in instruction, for struggling readers.

All curriculum chosen by BCS is a Tier 1 curriculum, which has been deemed to be the best available in the state of Louisiana, Tanner said.

“In Louisiana, all school systems are able to purchase instructional materials that are best for their local communities,” she said. “The Louisiana Department of Education led an online review of instructional materials to determine the degree of alignment with state content standards, to support school systems with these decisions.”

This grant is the second major award that BCS has received in recent months.

The district also received a $202,000 School Redesign Grant from the Louisiana Department of Education. This money has been used to fund professional development classes for the district’s teachers, giving them additional training to help them do their jobs better.

The SRCL grant is a federal grant aimed at improving the reading and writing skills of students. These flow-through funds will directly support school systems in their literacy efforts to benefit children from birth through 12th grade. School systems are awarded funds based on the strength of their proposed literacy plans.

Louisiana received the second highest grant of 11 states selected to benefit from the federal grant, and it is the only state to receive the grant three consecutive times.

The grant period runs from Oct. 1, 2017, through Sept. 30, 2020.