11th-hour effort wins reading race

BROOKSVILLE Brooksville Elementary School has been named the winner of a national reading challenge and earned top ranking in a world record book — in part thanks to employees staying up late plugging in last minute numbers to keep the No. 1 spot.

As another Florida school and one from California rapidly jumped ahead in the Scholastic Summer Challenge rankings Wednesday by submitting millions of logged reading minutes by students at their respective schools, BES officials jumped in to do the same — staying up until almost midnight while electronically entering in data based on minutes students spent reading throughout the summer and at school.

As a result, the number of recorded minutes BES students spent reading throughout the summer for the competition increased by more than 1.367 million — or more than 75 percent — in eight hours from 1,809,334 at roughly 4 p.m. to 3,176,409 at midnight.

In all, those 3.1 million minutes equates to each of the 800 estimated BES students participating spending 66.17 hours reading on average throughout the summer.

BES principal Mary LeDoux explained that she and other school employees almost became too complacent toward the end of the competition and hadn't bothered to log in millions of summer reading minutes or time students spent reading during school.

It wasn't until Beacon Cove Intermediate School in Florida and St. Isidore Elementary School in California began catching up in reading minutes Wednesday by leaps and bounds that LeDoux said other staff members began pouring through many of the summer minutes logs that students had submitted in writing to the school instead of on the computer.

"We weren't really worrying much about logging in all of our minutes because we were so firmly in the lead," LeDoux said. "But then these two other schools began logging in minutes like crazy and were really closing the gap."

Nancy Lovelock, BES media specialist, added that she and other employees then took the reading minute paper logs home and stayed up late submitting those online along with recorded time students had spent reading in class that was provided by BES teachers.

By midnight, BES had beaten Beacon Cove by 712,313 minutes.

"We're all exhausted, but excited," Lovelock said.

By winning the competition, BES will receive a copy of the 2012 Scholastic Book of World Records and inside will list the school as having won first in the reading competition.

LeDoux said a pep rally would also be held at a later date when Scholastic representatives would visit the school along with school district leaders to celebrate BES ranking in the national reading competition.

The Scholastic reading challenge began in 2006 in an effort to engage more students in reading during the summer. According to Scholastic's website, research showed that children regress in reading and other academic skills while off from school.

The challenge's goal was for children to surpass last year's record of 52 million minutes needed in order to set a new world record in summer reading. That record was surpassed by more than 12 million minutes with a count of more than 64,213,141.

Meanwhile, Lovelock and LeDoux agree that no matter the school's ranking, the important thing is that BES students have shown great strides in reading performance on FCAT and other assessments.

LeDoux added that competition, along with school and parent support, is just what BES students needed to make academic gains.

"It's been a lot of fun and it has kept kids motivated to read. And that's what it's all about," LeDoux said. "Competition is definitely something that our kids can get behind. And, of course, now we have a title to defend."