Book Stop curbs summer slide

Staff and teachers from New Kensington-Arnold SD are helping students hold onto and enhance academic skills over the summer through Book Stop events.  Held at four locations around the community, Book Stop offers hundreds of books from which students can choose their favorites. The books were donated by the United Way. In a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article the school’s principal, Nicole Bitar, said that the Book Stop is an additional part of the district’s existing effort to curb “summer slide,” or students’ tendency to lose academic gains over the summer break. Bitar said that the district already has been keeping in touch with parents and issuing reading lists during the summer, but staff hopes to get 1,000 books to students through the Book Stop program.