Oregon Public Broadcasting

Leaders of Oregon’s Start Making a Reader Today program are announcing that they will be eliminating nearly 200 paid positions in a major restructuring of the 16 year-old non-profit. Rob Manning reports.

The SMART program is credited with putting thousands of adult volunteers into Oregon classrooms every year to give individual attention to children learning to read. But new C-E-O, Terry Shanley, says the programs are too expensive to run, the way they’re currently structured. Shanley says reaching more kids means requires turning 198 part-time coordinator positions into “volunteer jobs.”

Shanley: “The organization under the current model wasn’t sustainable, nor was it scale-able. So if we are going to be true to our vision, we need to make a significant change, and this restructure is part of that change.”

Shanley says the paid coordinators will work through the end of the current school year, and will receive job counseling, if they want it. Officials at SMART say the volunteer model they’re switching to has been used before by other non-profits, like the Special Olympics.