Community Corner

Rotary Breakfast Turns Pancakes into Books for Berkeley Heights Students

Don't miss Saturday's Berkeley Heights Rotary Breakfast, where the proceeds will bring hard-cover encyclopedias to all the district's schools.

Saturday is a great day to enjoy a good breakfast while helping eager Berkeley Heights students get the encyclopedias they need.

The Rotary Club of Berkeley Heights is holding its annual Community Family Breakfast Saturday from 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Union Village United Methodist Church at 1130 Mountain Avenue (corner Mountain and Hillcrest), at the “four-way stop.”

The cost for the all-you-can-eat breakfast is $7 each (or $20 for the whole family) and includes pancakes, freshly-made scrambled eggs, hot sausages, cereal, orange juice, and coffee, with all the trimmings and fixings.

It's all very local and community-oriented. The breakfast, which is cooked by Rotary Club members, is served by local Boy Scouts and members of Governor Livingston’s InterAct student service club - both of which are sponsored by the Club. 

The money raised in town “stays in town,” said Event Chairwoman Lynn Falanga. 

This year, the Rotary Club is seeking to benefit the township’s six schools by purchasing a World Book Encyclopedia for each school. And not just the much cheaper digital or online models.

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Depending on the proceeds, each school will get its own hard-bound 22 volumes, covering every topic imaginable in more than 14,000 pages.

“The media directors of the schools have been begging for regular book encyclopedias,” said Rotary Club Secretary Hal Daume. “We asked them what they wanted, and they said these books.”

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The district is “very electronically oriented,” Daume said he was told by the experts. Sometimes that doesn’t work in the classroom. “The kids need the books. The media directors use it as a teaching aid.”

District Supervisor Laurie Scott said that the books were vital as information resources. “We use them to teach students research methods and library science. They’re invaluable,” she said. Superintendent of Schools Judith Rattner is also fully behind the encyclopedia acquisition.

The Rotary Club intend to bypass all the middlemen, buy the encyclopedias themselves and gift them directly to the schools.

But even with that, the price is steep. The average World Book sets runs about $1,000, making the district-wide purchase about $6,000. 


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