In September, New York City’s education department plans to open the city’s first traditional public school exclusively devoted to students with dyslexia and other reading issues.

The new school, called South Bronx Literacy Academy, is the culmination of years of advocacy from a handful of parent advocates who watched their own children flounder without adequate reading instruction and argued the city does not have a systematic approach to reading instruction.

Their goal was to coax the city to build classrooms similar to what’s offered at private programs, like The Windward School, which specialize in intensive literacy instruction but are often out of reach for families without the time or resources to secure private tuition reimbursement from the city.

The group helped persuade the city to launch a pilot program this school year to test out a version of the model in an existing public school, P.S. 161. And they even started their own nonprofit, the Literacy Academy Collective, which has helped support the effort.

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