Spring Urban Collaborative Member Meeting
Stop by our booth and join us for our presentation!
Date: April 21, 2026, at 10:30 a.m.
Location: Newark Liberty Marriott Airport Hotel, Salon 1
Presentation: Building a System for Secondary Reading Intervention: Lessons from Sweetwater Union High School District
Presenter: Michelle Sturm-Gonzalez, Director of Special Services, Sweetwater Union High School District, and Dave Kiyvyra, Director of Development for Lindamood-Bell For Schools
Description:
Many districts struggle to support students who enter secondary school with significant reading difficulties. Secondary special education teachers are often not trained to teach reading; intervention programs can be too scripted to respond to individual student needs or are designed primarily for younger learners; scheduling dedicated intervention time can feel impossible; and data to clearly determine student needs is often limited.
Join us to learn how Sweetwater Union High School District partnered with Lindamood-Bell to implement intensive reading intervention during both the school year and the summer. Special Education Director Michelle Sturm-Gonzalez will share how she defined the problem, built teacher capacity, created workable schedules across schools, analyzed data to identify student needs, and leveraged Lindamood-Bell’s differentiated instructional methodology to improve reading outcomes for the district’s most struggling students.

