Fogelsville Elementary Gets $5,000 From Amazon.com

students set a record at its second annual Read-A-Thon, which wrapped up last Friday, said Cindy Cook, the PTO's vice president of funding and chairwoman of the event.

"It was fantastic," Cook said out of the outcome of the 28-day "Reading Rocks" event in which 456 students participated. "It was just phenomenal."

Cook said the school set a reading goal of 189,000 minutes, with each student having to read 15 minutes a day; 105 minutes a week.

"We just demolished that goal," she said.

The school's record: 309,149 minutes.

Cook said that 17 of 20 classes met their reading goals with Mrs. Anthony's fourth-grade class taking the top spot with 29,088 minutes. She said 23 students read more than 1,000 minutes in any one week and that the top reader was fifth grader Nehali Gupta, who logged 11,550 minutes. Fourth Grade led the way with a combined 70,330 minutes.

The school raised $11,000 from the event with Amazon.com contributing $5,000.

"We believe reading allows children to discover new places, cultures and the history of the world.  It brings people together to share stories and experiences. For all of these reasons, we believe the read-a-thon is an important endeavor and are pleased to support this effort,” Amazon General Manager Vickie Mortimer said.

With the Amazon donation, the school purchased 30 Kindles, Cook said, with the winners allowed to use them first.

"It has been such a rewarding month for me to see the amount of support and enthusiasm from our principal, staff, students and families. This support encouraged the students at Fogelsville to do such an unbelievable job," Cook said.

She said the school's next fundraiser is based on a carnival theme for the spring festival on May 11.