For Immediate Release: November 8, 2022

The City of Alexandria Children & Youth Community Plan 2025 (CYCP) sets long-term priorities and provides a roadmap to success through community-wide coordination and delivery of services to all city children from birth to 21 years-old and their families. 

CYCP 2025 goals include ensuring that all children, youth and families: 1) are physically safe and healthy 2) are academically successful and career ready and 3) have positive experiences.

Each month, the CYCP highlights areas of progress through the CYCP Report Card. This month, the CYCP looks back on recent work to advance reading by third grade and reading for pleasure. Reading is one of the most critical skills in life—the foundation for learning and a predictor for graduating from high school. A national study conducted by the City University of NY shows that students who do not read by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school. Research shows that young people who read for pleasure at least three hours a week exhibit more positive than negative values.

See the entire Report Card on Reading and find out how the Alexandria Library and other CYCP collaborators have worked to ensure that all Alexandria children can read, as well as ways get involved. See city data trends by demographic, including the racial/ethnic disparities, and meet three bilingual story time leads, this month’s “caring adults,” who act out skits, read stories, and sing to crowds of kids and their caregivers at Alexandria libraries.

As a partner in the trio comprising the City’s Unified Implementation Team, the Department of Community and Human Services CYCP Coordinator is working with Alexandria City Public Schools and the Alexandria Health Department to align their three respective strategic plans in areas of shared goals. The Team is guided by three principles: 1) trauma-informed approaches to raise awareness of the prevalence of trauma and target root causes 2) racial equity, which aims to correct systems and policies that negatively impact Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) and 3) the use of developmental assets to mitigate adverse childhood experiences.  Learn more about the Unified Implementation Team and their plans.

For inquiries from the news media on the CYCP report cards, please contact CYCP Coordinator Chelsea Eickert at 571.447.8132 or chelsea.eickert@alexandriava.gov.

This release is available at: alexandriava.gov/go/4108