A task force of literacy educators and administrators from Belmont Public Schools is gathering input from the community to select the district’s next K-3 literacy curriculum.
The Belmont Literacy Curriculum Council is updating the curriculum to align with Superintendent Jill Geiser’s strategic plan, which underscores the objective of providing state-of-the-art curriculum to all students.
“Our first strategic priority is about academic excellence and equity, and ensuring that every kid has access to high-quality curriculum,” said Lucia Sullivan, the district’s assistant superintendent.
Supporting Students
Services provided to every student are considered the “Tier 1” of the district’s multi-tiered system of support for learners; Tier 2 and Tier 3 include supplemental interventions for students aimed at supporting individual needs.
According to Sullivan, a robust curriculum for all students (Tier 1) can minimize the need for future interventions. For example, the Tier 1 phonics and literacy programs are designed to work together to enable students to read and write effectively.
This month, Gov. Maura Healey’s administration opened applications for a statewide grant to fund high-quality instructional materials for elementary literacy programs.
The Partnership for Reading Success — Massachusetts II grant is part of the governor’s multi-year initiative to improve reading skills for students in pre-K through third grade.
Sullivan said Belmont plans to apply for the grant. Still, regardless of whether the district receives the additional funding, it will proceed with developing an updated literacy program.
Literacy and phonics instruction are both vital for young learners, Sullivan said.
“[Phonics] is absolutely foundational and essential,” she said. “But all of that is separate from learning to read a story, understanding rising conflict and character change and the importance of setting and description, learning how to write, and learning how to use informational text.”
Teaching primary literacy is also foundational to the work of Belmont Public Schools, according to Sullivan.
“It is one of the most important things that we do,” she said. “We want to make sure we get that right.”
The Programs
Starting with 14 options, the task force whittled the list to three.
Programs were eliminated if they were found to be culturally destructive, lacking in diverse representation, expected to require learning time that exceeds class schedules, purely phonics-based, too costly to implement, or ineligible for grants from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
“We want to ensure that the curriculum that we offer our students is going to be respectful and honor their backgrounds and lived experience,” Sullivan said.
She said the perfect curriculum mirrors students’ experiences and gives them insight into the experiences of others.
The three programs currently being considered are Arts and Letters (by Great Minds, 2025), Expeditionary Learning Education (by Open Up Resources, 2025), and Fishtank Plus ELA (by Fishtank Learning, 2021).
“Of the three that we narrowed it down to, they’re all good,” Sullivan said. “We have done a good job of removing everything that isn’t going to work for us…Now, it’s just a matter of identifying which is the best of the three.”
Moving Forward
The council will gather additional input from the community on the final two curricula, including a Zoom event on May 7.
Then, the council will share its final recommendation to Geiser and the School Committee on May 20.
Following the May 20 meeting, teachers will have an opportunity to learn more about the chosen curriculum, including hearing from teachers currently using it. Lastly, there will be an opportunity for Belmont teachers to visit other districts to observe the implementation of the curriculum.
Contingent on funding, the district may pilot the new curriculum during the 2026-2027 school year.
“For us, it will really just be a question of if we have money in the general fund available for fiscal year 26 to outfit these classrooms with the curriculum and materials that they would need to be able to pioneer,” Sullivan said.
Preparing Teachers
The hope is that teachers who pioneer the new curriculum during the 2026-2027 school year will be able to provide support for those who adopt the curriculum in the following years; some programs also include instructional videos and supplemental materials to help teachers learn how to implement the curriculum.
“It’s really important that we have a strategy for how to ensure that the teachers are well prepared,” Sullivan said, noting that the district has not had funding for instructional coaches, and teachers have limited time in the day for professional development. “One way to [prepare teachers] is to slowly roll something out. … [As] you build competency, people are able to help each other.”
According to Sullivan, the primary literacy curriculum specialist will also assist literacy teachers across the district.
“She works with [them], but she’s just one person across four elementary schools,” she said.
Sullivan said she hopes the chosen program will be an effective tool for student learning.
“I hope that it’s highly engaging and that teachers find it facile—that it’s easy for them to use and implement,” she added.
Ultimately, the goal is for students to be deeply engaged in their learning, according to Sullivan.
“We want them to be active and have agency,” she said. “So we want to ensure that we have curriculum materials that do that for kids.”
More information on the curriculum review process can be found at https://www.belmont.k12.ma.us/o/bps/page/english-language-arts-and-reading-k3-curriculum-review.