Limos for Learning rewards young readers

Eleven limousines pulled up to the front door of Ryan’s Steakhouse in Simpsonville, South Carolina, as a crowd cheered and media waited with cameras and notebooks for the honored guests. Out jumped the day’s celebrities, students from nine Laurens County elementary schools who participated in the Limos for Learning program. They walked a red carpet through the doors into the restaurant to eat a free lunch and experience entertainment from a magician and Michael Cogdill, WYFF-4 broadcaster and children’s book author.

More than 200 students hopped out of the limos Wednesday, April 23, 2008, as the crowd cheered them on. The third- and fourth-graders had qualified for the trip through a reading rewards program started by a Laurens businesswoman five years ago. Since then, it has blossomed into a statewide incentive program, and this year alone, more than 15,000 students have taken a limo ride to a free lunch to celebrate reading goals that they’ve met.

Betsy Ross, president of Limos for Learning, started the program because as a pharmacist, she saw many patients who couldn’t read their own health-care materials. Early intervention was the key, she said. Read more about the program in The Greenville News online.