(Left to Right): 3rd place, 6th grader Jocelyn Nolan; 1st place, 3rd grader Lia Neira; and 2nd place, 8th grader Isa Millham.

St. Francis Central Catholic School in Morgantown has been not only recognized as the best in the state for the fourth year in a row, but also for the second consecutive year the school has been recognized in the top 20 of the nation by Scholastic Books through its Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge.
The school recently celebrated a tremendous achievement having read 718,377 minutes in the 2019 challenge.
The Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge is designed to help kids turn the “summer slide”—the learning loss which can occur over the summer months—into a “summer leap” by discovering the power and joy of reading for fun. This year’s theme was Read-A-Palooza. Once participants reached different milestones (25, 50, 100 million minutes) a minimum of 200,000 books were donated to the United Way for children in the United States.
The program offered kids the chance to log their reading minutes to earn digital prizes as they completed weekly reading challenges, gaining access to 18 reading activities, including games, quizzes and videos based on popular children’s books. Parents and families also had access to free summer reading resources, including booklists across all age groups in both English and Spanish.
This summer, all 50 states, Washington D.C., two U.S. territories and 14 countries read millions of minutes in the annual summer reading program (between May 2019 and September 2019). One school from each state with the most minutes read this summer was named “Best in State” and received a special Celebration in a Box kit to host a celebratory event.
To recognize their achievement St. Francis held an award ceremony, which celebrated the power of summer learning. The students who achieved the goal to read over 1,600 minutes attended a grade-level party. PK2 through PK4 celebrated with a play party and ice cream, while Kindergarten through 8thgrade participated in team building field games, with music, popcorn and ice cream. The top three readers in the school tallied terrific times: Lia Neira (3rd grade) in First Place with 33,775 minutes, Isa Millham (8th grade) in Second Place with 25,205 minutes, and Jocelyn Nolan (6th grade) in Third Place with 23,860 minutes.