The leaders of the Kentucky Writing Project are engaged in a fight for the survival of the Kentucky Writing Project network. While the network has managed to survive the loss of funding from the Kentucky Department of Education in 2018, thanks to the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy grant and a C3WP grant from the National Writing Project, both of those grants will end in 2020. In addition, while those grants have kept our doors open they have not allowed us to grow our network through Invitational Summer Institutes, and so it is essential that we receive state funding to support the Kentucky Writing Project. KWP leaders are working with Kentucky legislators (and hopefully Governor-elect Beshear) to include funding in the state budget so we can again offer ISI’s at all eight KWP sites and ensure that Morehead Writing Project and all the sites in our network have a future.
The Morehead Writing Project and the Louisville Writing Project are the only sites out of the eight that are currently active and offering programming. MWP has been very lucky that Morehead State and the English Department have continued to recognize the value of our work and its impact on the region, but without state funding that support is always in danger due to MSU’s own budget woes. This funding will ensure that MWP has a future.
We will need the support of the teachers, students, and community members impacted by our work over the coming months as we advocate to be included in the budget and fight to stay in it. As most teachers are aware thanks to our recent civic education no budget line is certain until the very end of the process. However, the next month is crucial to achieving our goal — the survival of the Kentucky Writing Project is at stake.
How you can help?
- Reach out to state legislators to let them know why KWP matters to you
- Write a testimonial about the difference that KWP has made in your life (use mine for inspiration!) and share it with MWP or a broader audience of legislators
- Put your students’ C3WP skills to work writing opinion pieces to support our efforts and share it with MWP or a broader audience
- Let MWP or KWP leaders know if you can meet with legislators to talk about our work
- Make #SaveKWP trend on Twitter and tag legislators so they can see the comprehensive literacy work taking place in Kentucky classrooms