[Press release from the Office of the Governor, June 9, 2017]
Supporting the development and enhancement of student reading skills, First Lady Mary Pat Christie announced today that Red Bank Primary School in Red Bank is receiving 500 books as part of the 11th annual Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge. Last year, 43 Governors’ Spouses, Governors and Lieutenant Governors participated as Reading Ambassadors for the summer program.
“Summer slide” accounts for as much as 85 percent of the reading achievement gap between lower income students and their middle-and upper-income peers, according to Scholastic. Having children stick to a reading routine during the summer break is crucial to strengthening reading proficiency. For every minute a child reads, he or she is enhancing those reading skills.
Red Bank Primary School covers students in Pre-K to Grade 3 and serves more than 600 students with nearly 100 staff members.”We are beyond ecstatic to have been selected by our First Lady, Mary Pat Christie, to receive these special books for Summer Reading,” said Luigi Laugelli, Principal of the Red Bank Primary School. “Our students, families and staff are grateful for access to quality literature, especially throughout the summer. As educators, we hope to instill the love of reading in our children and strive to ensure this love continues well beyond their time in school.”
In 2016, Newell Elementary School in Allentown logged 2,606,028 reading minutes, making them the number one school in New Jersey last year.
Nearly 250,000 children from 5,154 schools in all 50 states as well as 25 countries read and logged more than 204 million minutes during the 2016 summer campaign.
For more information about the 2017 Scholastic Summer Challenge, visit http://www.scholastic.com/ups/campaigns/src-2017/
