After over 3,340 miles on the road traveling to and from Baileys Harbor to Madison, Kari Bauman is happy that her child and yours too will have the tools to succeed in the classroom. Governor Tony Evers signed the Right to Read Act into law on Wednesday, hoping to reverse a troubling trend in the state’s dipping reading scores in recent years. Wisconsin schoolchildren will use a technique known as the Science of Reading, which focuses more on the sounds of letters than words. The state budget committed more than $50 million to the Right to Read Act, which will be invested in teacher training, teacher coaching, and new curricula for schools. Rep. Kitchens says it is particularly satisfying to help get this bill to the Governor’s desk.

Wednesday’s signing was a sigh of relief for Bauman, who first approached Kitchens advocating for her son, whose struggles with dyslexia led him to hate school, and her to go out of state to get him the help he needed. She knows the journey is not over for kids who struggle with their reading just because a bill she traveled to Madison eight times to help push was finally signed.

Both Kitchens and Bauman say the real goal now is to make sure that schools commit to the process and can help their students improve through accountability.