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Rensselaer Park Wins NYS Regional PTA Award for 9th Time!

Congratulations to Rensselaer Park Elementary School for winning the New York State PTA Northeastern Region's Pick a Reading Partner (PARP) Award for the 9th consecutive time! RPES Reading Teacher, Kelly Juliano, accepted the award at the Northeastern PTA Region Officers and Administrators Dinner on October 20, 2025.

Rensselaer Park Elementary Reading Teacher Kelly Juliano Holding the PARP Award

The PARP program is a statewide NYS PTA initiative promoting literacy and daily reading among young students. Students pick a reading partner (parent, grandparent, sibling, etc.) and read for at least 20 minutes daily with them outside of school while the program is running.

Winning PARP programs must:

  • Encourage cooperative reading or literacy activities for at least 20 minutes a day
  • Have a wide variety of community involvement and participation
  • Be accessible and affordable to all communities and make creative use of literacy activities

RPES won this year's Northeastern Region PARP Award for their 2024–25 School Year edition of the program - "The Reading Eras Tour: Rensselaer Park's Version" - which took students on a reading tour of the eras starting in the 1960s and ending in the 2010s. The program ran from February 28–April 4, 2025, with a school-wide reading goal of 228,865 minutes read during that time. By the time the program ended, RPES had flown past its goal with an incredible total of 267,137 minutes read!

Thank you to all of the RPES families, students and employees who made the 2024–25 PARP program a success! Plus, a special shout-out goes to Ms. Juliano, the lead PARP organizer at the school every year!