NEW BRITAIN — Boosting the reading scores of the city’s third-grade students — who rank next to last in the state — might seem like a daunting task, but city officials and educators believe it’s attainable.

The numbers are startling: Only 42 percent of New Britain’s 775 third-graders have been graded as proficient at reading, meaning they read at a third-grade level. The state average is 74 percent. Only Bridgeport ranks lower.

The Hispanic community and those from poorer backgrounds, where absenteeism rates are high, tend to have lower reading scores, officials said.

About 30 political leaders, representatives of foundations and nonprofits, and educators from the school district and Central Connecticut State University Thursday gathered at City Hall to discuss ways to improve the scores. According to Merrill Gay, director of the New Britain Early Childhood Collaborative, the third grade was chosen as a benchmark because “children not learning to read by the third grade fall farther and farther behind.”

Gay said certain goals must be established, such as ensuring youngsters are ready for kindergarten, reducing chronic absences and offering classes during the summer. It’s the hope of the collaborative, Gay said, that city third graders will be reading at or beyond the state average by 2020. And the collaborative is working toward having reading scores exceed those of surrounding urban school districts by 2015.

Sharon Beloin-Saavedra, chairwoman of the Board of Education, proposed several initiatives at Thursday’s two-hour get-together. They include supporting city-wide preschool, which New Britain does not have. She also favors extending the school year beyond 180 days for kindergarten through the second grade. Both  those measures would cost money with the state needing to step forward to help pay, Beloin-Saavedra said.

But, according to Gay, many proposals and ideas to increase reading scores do not cost money.

“Parents need to play an active role in their child’s life,” he said. “Parents reading to their children every day, just 20 minutes a day, is one way of accomplishing that.”

According to a PowerPoint presentation that cited gradelevelreading.net as a source, students nationally who don’t read at grade level by the third grade are four times more likely to leave high school without a diploma. In addition, only 17 percent of students nationally who qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch are reading at grade level by third grade.

The ciy’s campaign to boost reading scores has garnered $350,000, a combination of state and private money. The money, Gay said, is used for materials such as books and for teacher development and training. The collaborative kicked off its campaign to increase third-grade reading levels last April.

CCSU President Jack Miller, who attended the session, said afterward, “This was a very successful meeting. There is a wide diversity of people who got together and articulated important goals for children ad students in New Britain.”