| Congratulations to Bridgeport Elementary School PTA, Central Region PTA AND NYS PTA Newsletter Award winner for 2009!!! Parents As Reading Partners is a collaborative effort among parents, staff, and community to build a reading partnership between home and the school. PARP programs encourage parents to read with their children for at least fifteen minutes per day. In 1987 the New York State PTA assumed the helm of the Parents As Reading Partners (PARP) program begun by the late State Senator James Donovan. PARP is a program designed to foster the love of reading in children by asking parents to set aside fifteen minutes a day to read with their children. Learning to read is the single most important activity in a child's education. Studies show that children who read at home are better prepared to succeed in formal education. The Parents As Reading Partners program is aimed at involving parents in the essential task of helping their children become lifelong readers. The primary objective of the program is to encourage reading at home. Children turn to their parents as role models and are more likely to follow the example of a reading parent. Reading at home further provides a supplement to the excellent reading programs currently used in our nation's schools. PARP asks parents to encourage their children to read, impressing upon them the fact that reading can be fun as well as informative. In addition, the daily communication shared through PARP will serve to strengthen the family. The PARP program can be run at little or no cost. In many cases volunteers from local businesses will donate funds for printing materials and awards/prizes for the children. The volunteer approach and the subsequent success that the PARP program has achieved are proof that it is truly a worthwhile project. A Parents As Reading Partners Resource Book and supplements are available from the NYS PTA office. Each supplement is an award-winning program that has been sponsored by a school in New York with great success. It can be a guide for PTA's that wish to start a program or are looking for new ideas. For more information on how you and your school can start "PARP"ing please contact your Central Region PARP Chair, Gloria Francisco at gfrancisco@twcny.rr.com. The deadline date for the PARP Award Application to be postmarked to the Central Region Director is June 15, 2010. The PARP Application can be downloaded from the link below.... | 
