This year, LZHS hired a reading specialist to help the school’s reading comprehension skills.

LZHS, along with 1,999 other schools in Illinois, is not meeting the Adequate Yearly Progress standard for the No Child Left Behind Act. Reading Specialists, such as LZHS’s newly hired Emily Boyas, help schools meet this requirement.

While English teachers focus on understanding literature and perfecting writing skills, Boyas’s program deals mostly with reading comprehension.

“When students see me, they gain strategies that they can learn in any class, not just English,” Boyas said. “I am here to help read and actually comprehend what they are reading.”

Since the program is new, Boyas says it is getting off to a slow start.

“Right now, the program is in the testing phase so I can see who needs my help,” Boyas said. “The testing phase is taking a longer time than we anticipated, so in the future I would like to start testing at the end of a school year and streamline right into the program at the beginning of the next year.”

Boyas does hope to work out the program’s kinks in the future, and hopes to even expand the program to every grade level, because right now she is primarily focusing on freshmen.

Boyas does hope to work out the program’s kinks in the future, and hopes to even expand the program to every grade level because it is primarily focusing on freshman.

While the program still focuses on freshman, Kim Kolze, Principal, believes the reading specialist position is one the school needs, according to the a August Lake Zurich Patch article.

“The reading specialist position is greatly in need and I’m glad to have Emily here,” said Kolze in the same Lake Zurich Patch article.

Along with Boyas, the school also hired 16 new teachers before the 2011-2012 school year started.