03/15/2019
Friends of the Literacy and Language Center,
It is with heavy hearts that we announce that the Literacy and Language Center will be closing its door for business on May 1, 2019. After helping nearly 700 local children to read, speak, write, and listen more effectively over 12.5 years, we are truly proud of how we’ve been a part of the San Francisco educational community. We have made it a goal to offer our customized, multi-sensory, research-based approach in literacy remediation to the entire community, regardless of their socio-economic circumstances.
The challenge of offering our services was always contingent on a highly-trained, compassionate, and reliable tutoring staff that in the last few years has grown much harder to find. In a general sense, the Bay Area has a well-documented ‘teach shortage’ that the recent Oakland teacher’s strike has highlighted. Other school districts in California but outside of the City pay significantly more than San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, or Oakland. This has negatively affected our staffing in that qualified teachers are often moving out of the city in order to buy houses or not work 2-5 jobs just to pay their basic housing costs. Most of us at the Literacy and Language Center have been trying to make this work for ourselves for many years. However, we have lost many staff members to last-minute teaching offers, creating a challenge to the running of the daily operations for the business. With this consistent challenge in place, selling the business wasn’t an option, as well. This has been a long process for us to finding solutions, and with the community changing rapidly in contrary directions. Certainly, the need for our services in the community has remained unwavering, and unfortunately, continues after we close.
As we wrap up our final days of service, we have been seeking other referrals in the area. Many other centers such as ours have closed as this staffing issue is a bit of an epidemic within educational therapy and tutoring centers in San Francisco. We are referring folks to Lindamood Bell Learning Processes on Union Street in San Francisco and Berkeley.
We wish you all a future filled with deep reading and listening, rich with expression and positivity. Because we all have had such an epic journey in teaching students in such poignant and incredible ways during our time here, we will all be moving forward in the work, never ceasing to find ways to assist others in seeing the beauty in reading and connecting through language. For now, may we all meet again in the pages of our favorite pieces of literature.
Most sincerely,
Amber Lamprecht
CEO, Co-Founder, Clinic Director
Literacy and Language Center, Inc.
