ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Changes to the reading curriculum are headed to schools in New York State. The Board of Regents recently decided phonics, the approach to learning to read and write by correlating sounds with letters, should be taught in schools.  Phonics includes learning different letter sounds, short and long vowel rules, and all things to better help breakdown unknown words. This is slated to start in the fall of 2025, when every school district in the state will be required to teach phonics. Earlier this year during her state of the state address, Governor Kathy Hochul said schools have continued to use outdated ways of teaching literacy to children despite the evidence-based success of phonetics. Locally, Sylvan Learning said they have always taught this curriculum at the center. "We're being able to take kids and give them that support in the phonics process and break the reading code for them, so we see many students who come to us that really struggle with decoding. So, at Sylvan we know that if we can help students improve fluency, their phonics strategy, we can break that code, and they can become more confident," director Susan Steron, said Wednesday. She said the COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on students, adding that it's something we're still seeing the results of. RCSD, Monroe County Legislator address absenteeism in school "When students missed a lot of those fundamentals of reading [during COVID] it kind of led to a struggle in meeting grade level expectations. So, I think something more drastic had to be done to mandate a change that we have to go back we have to focus on those foundations," she said. She said she believed this was something in the works for a while.