Two Jacksonville mayors walked into a Garden City preschool on Friday morning to tout the benefits of early literacy.
The 4-year olds from Kreative Minds Academy sat quietly, as long as they could, as they received books about a secret seahorse, birds, and a moose and 20 mice.
The books were gifts that were part of a “Mayor’s Book Club” initiative conjured by Mayor Donna Deegan’s administration, funded in part by a $1 million gift from the Gate Foundation and provided by Georgia-based nonprofit Ferst Readers.
Gate Petroleum CEO John Peyton says he was inspired to see the Deegan administration wanted early literacy to serve as a cornerstone of its platform. When Peyton was Jacksonville’s mayor, he identified literacy as a priority of his administration and funded those programs through the Jacksonville Journey…