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MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2025

VOLUME 119 - ISSUE 36 Not officially associated with the University of Florida

Published by Campus Communications, Inc. of Gainesville, Florida

Illiteracy’s hidden toll on Alachua County families Rising illiteracy rates leave families trapped in cycles of poverty and limit children’s chances of success By Logan McBride Alligator Staff Writer

Dylan Speicher // Alligator Staff

A sign at the lookout on the Bolen Bluff trail at Payne’s Prairie warns guests about preserve hours on Saturday, June 14, 2025. Read more on pg. 5.

Republicans resume focus on UF presidential search FLORIDA GOP ASKS UF TO CONDUCT AN OPEN PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH

By Maria Avlonitis Alligator Staff Writer

As UF’s third presidential search in three years looms, one word has become ubiquitous: politics. Sen. Rick Scott and Reps. Greg Steube and Byron Donalds wrote a letter to the UF Board of Trustees June 18 asking for an open and transparent search process following the secret search that took place over the past several months. Santa Ono, the University of Michigan’s former president, was announced as the sole finalist of the UF presidential search May 4, surprising

students and faculty. Ben Sasse, UF’s previous president, was the sole finalist of his search, which also took place behind the scenes. Despite Ono receiving full support from the UF Board of Trustees, the Florida Board of Governors rejected the candidate in a 10-6 vote June 3. Within a month of his announcement as the sole finalist, Ono received a wave of conservative backlash for his past support of diversity initiatives. Scott, Steube and Donalds’ letter cited concerns about Ono, which “would have been dealt with long before this month’s vote” if UF had done a transparent search, the letter said. An open search process that publicly considers multiple candidates is “what led Florida to [become] the

top state for higher education almost a decade ago,” they wrote. Most Florida university presidents earn a $1 million salary package, but Ono’s package was valued at around $3 million. Students, families and Florida taxpayers should be involved in the process because they help fund the compensation packet, the letter wrote. The search is confidential because of Senate Bill 520, a law Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in 2022, which exempted public records requirements for any personal identifying information of applicants to be president of a state university. The Florida House of Representatives tried to reverse the law with a 104-8 vote for House Bill 1321 in

SEE PRESIDENT, PAGE 4

SPORTS/SPECIAL/CUTOUT

The Avenue: Late night eats

Gator Band’s first female drum pg# captain. Read more on pg. 5.

The Avenue: Lorde’s “Virgin”

UF's Story drumline description finish with comma,

A guide to restaurants open late, pg. 6 Reviewing the artist’s fourth studio album, pg. 7

Nearly one in five adults in Alachua County can’t read well enough to navigate daily life – part of a rising tide of illiteracy that has quietly surged across the country in recent years. The problem is mirrored nationally, with American adults who scored in the lowest rates of literacy proficiency climbing nine percentage points in six years. The UF Lastinger Center for Learning is a research hub under UF’s College of Education. It researches solutions to improve teaching, learning and child care. The Lastinger Center’s Comprehensive Literacy Needs Assessment gathered data from more than 1,300 Alachua County community members, including educators, students and parents. The report compiled nine months of independent study, in addition to state and nationwide studies and Alachua County Public Schools data. The report’s results detail how illiteracy can damage an adult's social and financial wellbeing and professional mobility. Alachua County organizations are attempting to close the gaps. Barbara Reardon, a literacy coordinator for the Alachua County Library District, said adults face a variety of barriers navigating literacy. As adults get older, it becomes more difficult to build literacy skills and more challenging to reach illiterate adults who may struggle economically, she said. Supporting illiterate adults can be challenging for organizations like the Alachua County Library District, she said, because it’s harder to get information to someone who struggles with

reading. Families with illiterate parents can also impact their children’s literacy, she added. A study by the National Institutes of Health found that a mother’s literacy level is the greatest determinant of her child’s academic success and literacy level. The National Library of Medicine also found low-income families have fewer parent-child verbal interactions. “This is certainly a cyclical problem,” Reardon said. “If we have adults in a family that have low literacy, then it’s much more difficult for those children to get the support and the exposure to reading.” According to the Lastinger Center report, 64% of adult learners nationwide are employed and parents of schoolaged children. “Adult learners” refers to individuals age 16 and older who didn’t complete K-12 education or possess a high school diploma but have gaps in educational skills like reading, math and spoken English. Alison Keel, a 62-year-old Gainesville resident, is a volunteer tutor for the Alachua County Library District’s adult literacy program. The free program offers oneon-one tutoring to adults struggling with literacy tasks. Keel has volunteered with the program since 2022. Improving literacy isn’t as simple as someone’s ability to read, she said, but also extends to life experience. Some of her students may be able to decode words through phonics, she said, but if they have no context for what the word means, it becomes a “nonsense” word, where students know it’s a real word but lack real-world context, making it difficult to understand what

SEE LITERACY, PAGE 3

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