Friday, June 17, 2005 | 4:13 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION
June 18-19, 2005
School phone directory recycling drive locations:
Northwest: Mountain View Elementary School, 5436 East Kell Lane
East: Daniel Goldfarb Elementary School, 1651 Orchard Valley Drive
Northeast: Sig Rogich Middle School, 235 Pavillon Center Drive
Southeast: Edna F. Hinman Elementary School, 450 Merlayne Drive
John R. Hummel Elementary School, 9800 Placid St.
Mountains of old telephone directories will mean new books for the children in Diane Carter's third grade class at Mountain View Elementary School.
R.H. Donnelley, publisher of the Sprint Yellow Pages, chose Carter and four other Clark County teachers at random from a pool of nominees to host phone book recycling drives. Each teacher will receive $2,000 to use for supplies, classroom technology or to continue their education.
Carter said she plans on using the money for books that are part of the accelerated reading program the school uses. Her students think that's a pretty good idea too.
Troy Bozeman, 9, brought in four books to recycle. He said he hopes Carter uses the money to buy mystery books.
Carter said when the time comes she will solicit her students' opinions about which books to buy.
Christine Keller of Hinman Elementary School, Lori Manzanares of Goldfarb Elementary School, Teresa Thompson of Rogich Middle School and Nancy Vitori of Hummel Elementary School were also chosen to participate in the program. They will host phone book recycling drives at their schools until July 31.
This is the first year the program has been tried in Las Vegas, R.H. Donnelley spokesman Paul Arnhold said. It has been very successful in other places, such as Lee County, Fla., where the recycling drive collected eight and a half tons of phone directories.
"We're able to help support these local teachers and recycle directories instead of seeing them go into a landfill," Arnhold said.
Any kind of phone directory is accepted at the recycling drive. At 10:45 on the first day of the recycling drive, there were already 40 phone books stacked against the wall in Carter's classroom.
"You'd be surprised how many parents have been in that are excited to have somewhere to bring these books in," Carter said.
Her students made fliers to post all over school and gave announcements to other classes to get more students involved. Carter said the books are coming from parents, grandparents and every grade level.
"It's a wonderful opportunity for them to share and see that big companies get involved with schools and are interested in what we're doing and supporting us," Carter said.
Dale Maynard, principal of Mountain View Elementary School, said the phone book drive is also an opportunity to bring the community together.
"It's really exciting because people are ready to recycle," Maynard said. "It's such a big item, an entire community's worth of phone books that's just a ton of trash. It's a great thing for the community partnership."
For Carter, the amount of money to purchase new school supplies is exciting.
"Two thousand dollars is a great deal of money to have for our use for this room," Carter said.
The books for the accelerated reading program are expensive, Carter said. And the tests that go with the books and help gauge a child's reading level can cost $20 each. This year the Legislature allotted $88 million for textbooks, instructional supplies and hardware for the 2005-2006 school year. That comes out to about $220 per student for the about 400,000 students in the state.
Arnhold said supporting education and children are causes R.H. Donnelley has adopted. To encourage recycling R.H. Donnelley has also partnered with the UNLV Rebel Recycling Program and will put recycling receptacles at Sprint PCS stores.
R.H. Donnelley is also hosting a "recycle for teachers night" with the Las Vegas 51s on July 16 at Cashman Field. Arnhold said a recycling container will be set up and each person who brings an outdated phone book will receive tickets to the game and a baseball.
"We're trying to do as many ways as possible," Arnhold said. "Our ultimate goal is to get as many (recycling locations) out there as possible."
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