Read To Win awards $25,000 to West Oahu schools

KAPOLEI—Now in its ninth year, the D.R. Horton-Schuler Division sponsored program Read to Win recently awarded five different Kapolei and Ewa elementary schools with $5,000 for doing something often taken for granted.

Created in 2004, the Read to Win program was designed to provide West Oahu keiki with an extra incentive to read. Each school year, the participating elementary schools tailor the program to correspond with their respective reading core curriculum. Since its beginning, more than $107,000 has been donated to participating schools. The Schuler Division conducts business in residential development in the West Oahu region, at Barbers Point, Ewa, Maili, Makakilo, and Mauka Lani Elementary Schools.

“We’ve been involved for a while now, our school started five or six years ago with just our third grade and because it did so well that year it’s expanded to almost the entire school now,” said Sean Tajima, principal of Makakilo Elementary.

Students in the program are assigned to read a set number of books during the school year or a targeted number of pages at home each night. They get their parents to sign their reading logs at home for teachers to review. Those who reach their reading goals can “win” money for their own school. Students also get to look forward to a fully dressed ice cream sundae if they reach their top reading goals.

“The kids are excited to read the books they borrow—they all want the cherry and sprinkles on their sundae,” Tajima said. “This year alone our K-5th has read about 32,000 books which is basically 6,000 a grade.”

Schools credit the success of the Read to Win program to their students’ willingness to read.

“The program put on D.R. Horton really helps the school out with funding for the library like buying new books for students and it also gives kids an incentive to read getting them to want to read, with the party at the end of the year,” Tajima said.