Towne Salute Meet

TOWNE SALUTE

Stacy Gullette

Start The Adventure In Reading (STAIR) Annapolis

By Tom Worgo

Stacy Gullette served as a member of Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley’s Human Services Transition Committee to help address the city’s addiction problem. Gullette was devoted to that mission, spending five months doing exhaustive research and talking to community leaders and addiction recovery experts. Gullette and committee chair DaJuan Gay compiled a report on her findings.

“To be honest with you, I thought my main focus would be on the opioid crisis,” she says. “But then I made a 180-degree turn.” how widespread illiteracy was among young elementary school students, and it shocked her. program at her school and has earned the respect of students, parents, and STAIR officials alike. For starters, Gullette got the kids’ parents more involved than ever before. She also set up a free library in the Bay Ridge Gardens community and began providing snack bags for her students and kids from the neighborhood when she found out some of them were going home hungry. She’s even learned Spanish through a phone app in order to better communicate with Hispanic parents.

“Stacy is extremely valuable to our organization. She exudes leadership in the most positive manner. She is so welcoming to all the students and volunteers, as well as their families.”

“We were looking at some of the statistics of our local schools and saw some students were reading way below grade level,” she recalls. The problem was particularly acute at Georgetown East Elementary School in Annapolis. “It was one of the poorest performing schools in the county,” Gullette says.

Gullette eventually connected with Start The Adventure In Reading (STAIR) of Annapolis and became the school’s site coordinator in 2018 for the nonprofit, which serves 13 elementary schools around the county. STAIR is an educator-approved literacy program designed to help second graders throughout Anne Arundel County improve basic reading skills and self-confidence in a fun, nurturing environment.

She oversees a group of 18 volunteers that tutor second graders one-on-one two nights a week. She and her tutors work primarily with Hispanic and African American students. She’s done little short of galvanizing the STAIR appealed to Gullette because of her educational background, which includes a B.A. in English from George Mason University. She later earned a master’s degree in accounting from George Washington University and spent three years as a C.P.A. with Ernst & Young, in Washington, D.C., before starting her own tax preparation service in Herndon, Virginia.

“Stacy is extremely valuable to our organization,” STAIR Executive Director Laura Iversen says. “She exudes leadership in the most positive manner. She is so welcoming to all the students and volunteers, as well as their families. She is really embracing family engagement this year and is very committed to leadership in the organization and at her specific site.”

What has particularly impressed Iverson is how effectively she’s gotten parents and guardians to buy into the reading program. The parents used to pick the kids up in the main office after a tutor took

the kids to them. But she began inviting them into the media center, where the mentors are working with the students.

“The parent can sit down with the students,” Gullette says. “If they come early, the students might read to them. The tutors get to talk to the parents and tell them how they are doing. We get to know the parents. We get to know whoever is picking that child up. The parents get more engaged. We get more of a feel of what their home life is like.”

Iverson loves what she hears from the parents about Gullette. “I can’t say there is anyone else who has shown as much effort in embracing the (family) outreach,” Iverson explains. “What is happening as a result, families are inspired and they are communicating that with STAIR staff. They are kick started to start the kids reading at home.”

Setting up the library, which resembles a small house, was another meaningful project. Gullette and her husband Mike spent about $300 of their own money to set it up from scratch. Gullette’s friends and neighbors donated hundreds of books to keep it stocked.

“We constantly make sure it’s stocked with books,” Gullette says. “We also put things in there to keep the kids in the community busy like play dough and little painting kits.” Gullette realizes that the kids get a lot out of the program, but she says she gets even more.

“What I love to see is when the little light bulb goes off in their heads,” Gullette says. “When they can not only read, but enjoy reading. The joy I see, the accomplishments in the students. It is thrilling. I also work with 18 amazing tutors. I am getting a whole lot of satisfaction out of this. Believe me.”

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