State PTA Recognizes Flower Hill’s PARP Program

The Flower Hill Primary School PTA’s Pick a Reading Partner program captured state winner honorable mention honors from the New York State PTA. It’s essentially the state runner-up award in the entire state for this past school year’s PARP program.

“We are excited to share this news with the district and Huntington community,” said Gina Leiter, who along with fellow parent Jenna Prada coordinated this year’s PARP program at Flower Hill School, which finished a “close second” according to the New York State PTA.

The goal of PARP is to encourage students to read at least 20 minutes every day with a reading partner. This has shown to help children develop a life-long love of reading.

“Our theme for the program was ‘Blast off with Reading,’” Ms. Leiter explained. “The program blasted off on March 1 with an assembly at the school by visitors from the Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium. The Vanderbilt also generously provided every student with a special poster of the moon as well as free tickets to the planetarium.”

Flower Hill PARP organizers also collaborated the Huntington High School robotics club, which created a motivational video about the importance of reading every day and also brought their newly built competitive robot to Flower Hill. The robot roved through the hallways much to the delight and excitement of all students and staff. The robotics team even held a special workshop for the top readers at the conclusion of PARP during which the youngsters were taught how to build a small robot.

“The Huntington Public Library also supported our program by hosting a special craft night at Flower Hill and approximately 25 families signed up for a library card during the event,” Ms. Parada said. “Overall, our program was a huge success.”

The stats tell the tale:

• Flower Hill students tallied 29,933 minutes during the two week program.

• Over half of the school students turned in their take-home PARP packet, which included their reading log and fun activities.

• 112 “mystery readers” read over 5,100 minutes to students during their surprise visit to Flower Hill classrooms. Superintendent James W. Polansky, parents, grandparents, siblings and a long list of other guests were among the participants.

• The top reader was third grader Taylor Flynn who compiled 981 minutes of reading during the program.

• Over 1,500 free books were taken home by Flower Hill students during the school’s annual book swap.

Joining Ms. Leiter and Ms. Parada on the PARP committee were Teddy Richmond, Francesca Spathis, Michelle David and Lisa Correa.

“Last year, our PARP program was selected as the Suffolk County winner, so we are just thrilled to be recognized on a state level this year,” Ms. Leiter said. It’s great news for our beloved Huntington UFSD.”

PARP committee members continue to receive feedback from Flower Hill parents and teachers regarding how popular the program was with children and how the fun theme and activities motivated their children to read.