Latisha Phillips reads to her son Kellen Phillips,3, during the ECARE family night at Global Learning Academy in Pensacola, Fl., Thursday, February 5, 2015.(Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today)

Statistics show that 1 out of every 3 children aren’t ready to enter kindergarten in Escambia County.

Statistics also indicate that children who enter kindergarten ready to learn are far more likely to graduate high school.

While no single factor determines whether a child is ready to start school, most people agree that learning to read is one them.

That’s where ECARE wants to help.

ECARE, an acronym for Every Child a Reader in Escambia, is a nonprofit that trains volunteers called Reading Pals to work with preschoolers whose language skills aren’t where they need to be.

The organization’s goal this year is straightforward and simple: To increase to 200 the number of children matched with a Reading Pal volunteer.

Currently, 176 kids have a volunteer who gives a small portion of his or her time to help a child learn to read.

Ashley Bodmer, executive director of ECARE, expects to reach get 200 volunteers in the next few weeks, but all the volunteers rarely make it through the entire year.

The plan is to staff enough volunteers to start school in September with 200 and increase to 250 volunteers by the end of 2017 school year, she said.

“We won’t have 100 percent retainment,” Bodmer said. “That’s why we continue to recruit.”

The recruitment efforts got a boost Friday at ECARE’s 2016 sponsorship and fundraising breakfast at Sanders Beach Corrine Jones Community Center.

More than 200 community, business and education leaders gathered to learn more about ECARE and encourage people to support the cause of helping young children learn to read.

John Hosman, chairman of ECARE’s board of directors, , painted a grim picture of the work that’s needed to get children prepared and ready to learn when they start school.

Right now a little more than 33 percent of 3,589 kindergartners — about 1,200 kids — show up unprepared to learn; nearly 8 percent of first-graders graders don’t pass to the next grade each year; only 55 percent of third-graders show proficiency in reading; students are five times more likely to drop out of school if they are retained during their academic career.

Once children start school, difficulty with reading contributes to failure in school, which can increase the risk of absenteeism, dropping out, juvenile delinquency, substance abuse and teenage pregnancy — all of the things that contribute to the cycle of poverty and dependency.

In charge of Escambia County schools, Superintendent Malcolm Thomas has dealt with the ill-effects of children arriving at school unable to read and consequently failing to graduate.

Thomas compared ECARE’s rise from a hand full of volunteers to 200 with the district’s incremental increase of its graduation rate from 55 percent to nearly 73 percent in the past few years.

“Students need to learn how to read but the progress comes slow,” Thomas said. “You can’t learn if you cannot read.”

Rick Harper, associate vice president of Research and Economic Opportunity at the University of West Florida, connected the dots between education and the economy.

The reality of the 21^st century work place is that innovation in technology and a global economy means fewer high-paying jobs for people doing work that can be automated or offshore.

Preparing children through early education is the simplest and most effective way to get them ready for the new job market and increase their success in life, he said.

“High-quality childhood and elementary programs improve character skills in lasting and cost-effective ways,” Harper said. “We have to get it right early.”

Organizers believe the Reading Pal program is right place to start by showing 3- and 4-year-olds the importance of reading and helping them learn to appreciate its value.

The hope is to find more volunteers like Brian Hancock.

When Hancock and his family moved to Pensacola last year, he quickly became an ECARE Reading Pal at Montclair Elementary School.

Montclair is one of six sites where ECARE is working to improve the kindergarten readiness of students who are at risk of being among the 1 out of every 3 Escambia youngsters who are not ready for school when kindergarten starts.

Hancock said he realized the importance of spending time with his Reading Pal, but he became discouraged because he wasn’t sure he was making an impact — until he saw how much the child enjoyed being with him.

“The most important thing you can do is to be consistent, to show up every week,” said Hancock, an attorney with Taylor, Warren & Weidner in Pensacola. “You can see their faces light up when you walk in the door.”

Hancock said the being a Reading Pal volunteer is as rewarding to the adults as it is for the children.

“I’m really thankful for programs like ECARE for bringing people together,” Hancock said. “Programs like this are vital to unifying a community.”