By STEVE ROUSSOS &
WENDY CALLISTER SPENCER
Special to the Times
In a quiet neighborhood in Merced, the sound coming from Maria Vazquez’s living room isn’t just the usual play-time chatter. It’s the sound of a 4-year-old — who hasn’t yet started kindergarten — clearly reading the words “coat,” “nine,” “feet,” and “five.”
Maria, a local licensed Family Child Care Home (FCCH) provider, wasn’t always sure this was possible. A year ago, she and other child care providers joined a pilot program funded by First 5 Merced County. The goal was to explore early literacy innovations that could reach thousands of children through child care providers. “When I heard about the program, I was interested in learning how to teach the children how to read, but I also felt a little bit insecure … because English is my second language,” she shares.
Today, Maria is a literacy leader. She is proving that our community’s childcare providers — equipped with the right tools and a dedicated heart — are a powerful force in unlocking a child’s future. This hope drives the Merced Literacy Catalyst.
Advancing A Legacy
The Merced Literacy Catalyst is a partnership of business, civic, and educational leaders measurably improving Merced’s literacy rates. The SkyRocket Reading method is the engine powering this impact. The method was refined for over 40 years by educator Lynne Hanson in the Bay Area. Its journey to our community is a local story. Wendy Callister Spencer, a Merced native, first trained in the curriculum with Lynne in 2000. After years of seeing its success, she took over the program in 2023 with an important goal in mind: bringing this life-changing method back to the place where she was born and raised.
That vision found its footing in 2025 through an Innovation Grant from the Merced County First 5 Commission. We set out to answer a specific question for our neighborhoods: Can our own local child care providers teach children ages 0-5 to read?
The evidence in Merced is pointing to a resounding yes. For Maria, the breakthrough came through a structured system that met her specific needs. “I had searched on my own on YouTube videos and reading articles to help my kids learn how to read … I didn’t know how to structure, how to do it, how to move to the next level. After I enrolled in the program, that gave me direction … and taught me how to get there.”
The results followed. “When [my students] started in my daycare, they didn’t know a letter, its sound, or name,” Maria says. “[Now] they know their letter names, their consonant sounds, and now they’re blending, because they’ve been in the program with me.”
A New Chapter
The data for our region presents a clear challenge: in 2025, 83% of Merced County students did not meet state proficiency standards for English. For fourth graders, when most children should be reading, this statistic was almost 90%. Rather than viewing this as an immovable obstacle, we see it as an opportunity to intervene earlier — before a child even enters the school system.
By empowering children to read early, we strengthen our partnership with our dedicated educators. We’ll be sending them students who are confident and ready to excel from their very first day of school. “The most exciting thing that makes me really happy,” Maria says, “is that they are learning to read, even though they haven’t gone … to a preschool or kindergarten [yet]. Now they are reading. They are blending sounds and they are reading little books.”
Join The Effort
Success in Maria’s living room is just the beginning. We believe every corner of Merced — our churches, businesses, nonprofits, and homes — can become a “launchpad” for young readers.
To make this happen, we launched the Merced Literacy Catalyst. This partnership between Community Initiatives for Collective Impact (Ci4Ci) and SkyRocket Reading is looking for dedicated adults ready to step up for our kids. This isn’t just a casual hobby; it’s a commitment to changing a child’s life path.
We are seeking individuals and organizations ready to invest in themselves and our youth. Whether you are a provider looking to enhance your child care home or a community member wanting to lead a small group at your church, you can become a Merced Literacy Catalyst Reading Instructor. By enrolling in the training, you’ll gain the specialized skills and proven materials needed to turn any setting into a reading teaching center. There is a cost for the training and materials, but the return on that investment is a child who enters school with the confidence of a reader.
Imagine The Future
Imagine a Merced where our county isn’t defined by literacy gaps, but by the fact that our little ones are already turning pages. A generation of confident readers today becomes a generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, and skilled workers tomorrow.
When a child learns to read, their world expands. When Merced reads, our whole community rises.
Ready to help? Whether you want to become a Reading Instructor, enlist your employer to support a program, or make a tax-deductible donation to the Merced Literacy Catalyst, we want to hear from you.
Contact: Steve Roussos, Director, Ci4Ci: [email protected], or Wendy Callister Spencer, CEO, SkyRocket Reading: [email protected]