Allen Retired Educator’s Association (AREA) is a service organization serving Allen Schools and the community. Membership is made up of Education retirees from Allen and the surrounding area.
One of the yearly projects of the Allen Retired Educators Association is the Children’s Book Project. This project is actually mandated by TRTA (Texas Retired Teachers Association). All Texas units must have a program of some kind, but most are smaller and many give only used books. The Allen unit has a committee of almost fifty members; this year’s committee had close to 100% participation at either shopping for books, plating, or delivery.
This year AREA raised over $1800.00 through donations from members and the community. In September 2015, we plated and delivered 246 gently used books collected at St. Jude to Boyd Elementary. We purchased 656 new books and delivered a book to every student at Reed Elementary in March 2016. We also gave a new book to each teacher for his/her classroom library. In addition, fifteen books were left with the school librarian to use at her discretion. In May 2016 we delivered another 156 gently used books to Boyd Elementary. These were collected at the April and May meetings and donated by AREA members. These books will be used for the Boyd Summer Program.
The Book Project rotates among Allen’s three Title I schools. Next year we will be focused on Boyd Elementary. There is a larger population at Boyd so we will be working hard all year to raise enough money for new books for every student there. If you are interested in making a donation, you can contact AREA 2nd Vice President , Sue Crawford – Stauffer at sssathome@yahoo.com