James_September-October_2026_web - Flipbook - Page 93
or four years now I
have heard the same
story from mayors
in cities of every
size. A mayor shows
up to read a book,
a room full of fiveyear-olds lights up and the mayor
leaves having gotten as much out
of the morning as the children
did, if not more. Allison Wilkerson,
the mayor of Grayson, told us she
did not expect it to affect her the
way it has. The questions children
ask, she said, convinced her these
small moments shape what a child
becomes and strengthen the bonds
shared by the community.
Cities do not run Georgia’s
schools. Mayors do not hire teachers, choose curriculum or approve
reading screeners. Nobody has ever
been elected mayor in Georgia on
the strength of third-grade reading
scores. Yet more than 170 of them
have signed up to read to young
students. It’s worth asking why.
The Georgia Council on Literacy reports that 62 percent of
Georgia third grade students are
currently not reading proficiently.
Children who are not reading proficiently by the end of third grade
are four times more likely to leave
school without a diploma. A 2023
analysis put the cost of low literacy
in Georgia at roughly $1.2 billion
a year in lost tax revenue, social
services and incarceration.
Georgia’s future workforce
starts with a child who can read.
We have been the nation’s top
state for business for more than a
decade, and staying there takes
more than tax policy and available
land. Employers must believe they
can hire here. Site selectors read
MADISON MAYOR FRED PERRIMAN
TIFTON MAYOR JULIE SMITH
school performance data long
before reaching out to a city. And
if they don’t like what they see, the
jobs go somewhere else. Children
who cannot read become adults
who cannot read a utility bill, a job
application, or a ballot.
GeorgiaForward, a GMA-managed nonprofit foundation, started
the Mayor’s Reading Club in 2022.
Grants and corporate support
fund the program. Georgia has
536 cities, and the problem looks
different in each one, so there is no
manual to follow. Each city builds it
from what it already has: a library,
a Boys and Girls Club, a summer
parks program, a service club looking for a project. Some mayors read
in classrooms. Some host citywide
reading challenges. Others organize
literacy walks.
We also commissioned a series
of children’s books in which a
young girl named Georgia Caroline
and her classmates discover how
their hometown works by meeting
the people who run it. Learning
to read while learning what a city
does strikes me as time well spent.
The more valuable thing a
mayor brings is not a reading voice.
It is a room. In most of our cities,
educators, nonprofits, employers,
and volunteers are working on the
same problem and rarely sit at the
same table. A mayor can call that
meeting and serve as a convener,
and people come.
LaGRANGE MAYOR JIM ARRINGTON
S E PT E M B E R/O C TO BER 2026
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