BOOKS ON BREAK
The Chatham Education Foundation (CEF), in partnership with the Chatham County Schools (CCS) offers a program called Books on Break.  With a tremendous amount of support and a seed grant of books from Book Harvest, CEF and CCS strive to get books into the hands of economically disadvantaged students for the summer months.

Why?

  • Statistics show that two out of three children living in poverty do not have books in their homes (Source: National Center for Children in Poverty, 2013)
  • More than 80% of children from economically disadvantaged communities can lose one to three months of reading skills over the summer.  This can add up to 3 years of learning loss by the 5th grade leaving them lagging behind their more affluent peers.
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    How?

  • CEF and CCS host a free book fair at two elementary schools in May each year.  Virginia Cross Elementary hosts over 90% of their students on the free-and-reduced lunch program and Siler City Elementary hosts over 85% of their students on this program. We are excited to announce that this year, we will be adding two additional schools, Moncure School and Bonlee School. Moncure School hosts around 50% of their students and Bonlee almost 60% of their students on the free-and-reduced lunch program.
  • These book fairs allow students to self-select books to read during the summer months and add them to their home libraries.
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    How can you help?

  • Look for upcoming county book drives.  We will accept new or gently used books.
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