“Unlocking the Secrets of Literacy.” Miami Times
According to MDCPS, over 40% of students who attend public school in Miami-Dade read below grade level. Despite this, many children with learning disabilities, particularly ones of color, struggle to get the help they need.
The Lucy Project is helping to turn this statistic around.
“I feel like this is my calling,” said The Lucy Project’s chief executive, Sandra Bermudez.
Bermudez started the nonprofit in 2020. The organization is named after Bermudez’s daughter, Lucy Sellinger Bermudez, who was diagnosed with and remediated for dyslexia when she was in elementary school. Although Lucy is now a rising junior in high school and reads two grades above her grade level, the road to success was not easy.
“Teach Me To Read.” Impact Edition
Sandra Bermudez sees the kids she works with through a parent’s eyes. As founder and CEO of The Lucy Project, a literacy education nonprofit named after her daughter, Sandra knows the bewilderment that comes with a learning disability diagnosis or a less-than-satisfactory progress report. For Lucy, these problems began to bubble up in kindergarten.
“I would catch her doing extra homework in the bathroom,” Sandra says. “She realized she wasn’t moving as fast as other kids. Her self-esteem started taking a hit. Our very happy-go-lucky child suddenly didn’t want to go to school.”
“‘Just a Mom’ Starts Nonprofit to Help Kids — Like Her Daughter — Learn to Read.” The 74 Million
The Lucy Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit advocating for and providing science-backed reading instruction. A full-time team of five — curriculum specialist, operations director, learning specialist, executive assistant and me — runs the show. We have school partnerships, teacher training programs and one-on-one lessons. Five part-time learning specialists are fully trained by my team. In October, we’ll hire six more.
Reading into Norwood Elementary’s stunning scores
At the start of the year, 52% of Norwood Elementary kindergarteners were developing readers. We aimed to make that 80% by the end of the year. In June, Acadience Assessments showed that 91% of students in the Literacy Hub program were reading on grade level.
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