We hit our Book Credits goal!

Our school lost many books in the September 2011 Flood

Owego Elementary School is a Pre-K 5 building with a population of 600 students.  We are located in the Southern Tier of New York State along the beautiful Susquehanna River.  Our student population is very diverse economically.  We are a Title One School with around 50% of our students qualifying for free or reduced lunch. The economy in general in our area is not good.  Very few new jobs have been created and many families have members who have lost jobs or know of friends who have.  Despite the poor economy, I feel that our parents truly value their children and try their best to provide them with things they need.  Even so, many of our children have very few books in their homes.  Our students rely on us to provide them with good books to read at school and to take home at night to read. 

Owego Elementary has a rich literary tradition.  We have provided Reading Recovery, one of the most successful, research supported interventions for first grade readers to our at risk population for the past 18 years.  In addition to our commitment Reading Recovery, we are a Literacy Collaborative School that is affiliated with Lesley University.  Through our affiliation, we provide ongoing training to all of our teachers in research supported, best literacy practice.   We have spent the last 15 years building state of the art book rooms for reading instruction, classroom libraries, and read aloud texts.

On September 7, 2011, the entire Southern Tier was hit by record breaking flooding.  The village of Owego was hit the hardest with large numbers of homes and businesses destroyed.  Three of the schools in our district received flood damage.  Owego Elementary School was hit the hardest taking in over 3 feet of water.  We are currently located in an alternative building 15 miles from our village.  Some of our books were salvaged from our flooded building.  We have lost around 40% of our book collections and need to replace them.  Your donations will be a big help in restoring our book collection!

Sincerely,

Laurie McKeveny, Principal

Denise Burts, Primary Literacy Coordinator

Brittany Dodge, Intermediate Literacy Coordinator