NEW YORK CITY — Students in Harlem and Bronx charter schools are celebrating the feat of having read one million books outside of school hours. The group of schools, known as the Success Charter Network, started the challenge in 2006. In addition to reading six books per week on their own time, the children read up to 12 books per week in school.
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Huffington Post reports:
Kids at the Harlem charter school celebrated the accomplishment today with a giant banner congratulating them on the literary feat.
“Books are a religion to us,” said former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, founder of the Success Charter Network.
There have been a few rules along the way to reaching this goal. Kids were allowed to pick their own books and each school signs a symbolic contract with parents to ensure that they will read to their children six days per week.
The group of charter schools has been making the case for a city-wide expansion of their network, with plans to add two more schools in Harlem and another one in the Upper West Side. Critics have complained that there is not enough space and the new schools will be severely overcrowded.
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