The Coppell High School varsity football team has a 4-1 record heading into the Cowboys’ bye week. On Friday night, during a 55-10 victory over the Pearce Mustangs, junior wide receiver Jacob Anene caught two touchdown passes for the second time in as many games.
Could his success on the gridiron be traced back to his time with the Lugnuts, the team of preschoolers whom I coached for the Coppell Baseball Association in the spring of 2013? Well, let’s put it this way: You can’t prove that there’s no connection between those experiences.
Coppell Couple Funds Book Vending Machine
Students at Riverchase Elementary will be able to amass personal libraries thanks to the generosity of a pair of the school’s neighbors.
The Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD Educational Foundation aims to place a book vending machine at every middle and elementary campus across the school district. The machine at Riverchase, which hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday morning, was paid for by Coppell residents Pat and Al Enlow.
“Your commitment and your generosity to the school district is phenomenal, and it shines through every day,” Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD Trustee Kim Brady told the Enlows.
Riverchase is the only CFBISD campus in Coppell, and its book vending machine — the 18th to be installed — is the first for any of the district’s schools west of Interstate 35E. The words “Gifted to Riverchase Elementary School by Pat and Al Enlow” are printed on the machine’s base.
The handful of students who participated in Friday’s ceremony were there because they’ve all had perfect attendance — including no tardies — this month. The Enlows helped each of them deposit a token into the machine, which says “One book, coming right up” after a selection is made. Other students will earn tokens by exhibiting good behavior, so the machine says “Keep up the good work” after a book is retrieved.
Al Enlow told the crowd that his wife had a 37-year career in public education — 21 years in the classroom followed by 16 years as an administrator. The last seven of those years were with Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD. These days, Pat Enlow serves as the vice president of programs for the CFBISD Educational Foundation.
“In a world dominated by screens and instant gratification, cultivating a genuine love for reading is one of the greatest gifts we can give to our children,” Al Enlow said. “Far more than just an academic milestone, a passion for reading serves as a self-sustaining engine for a child’s lifelong curiosity and intellectual growth.”
The emcee for the ribbon-cutting ceremony was Victor Johnson, executive director of the CFBISD Educational Foundation. He said research shows that students who read for 20 minutes per day are exposed to approximately 1.8 million words each year and are far more likely to score in the 90th percentile on standardized tests. By contrast, students who read for only five minutes per day encounter about 282,000 words annually and tend to score around the 50th percentile.
“The message is clear: Reading matters,” Johnson said.
State Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez, whose legislative district encompasses the majority of Coppell, encouraged the children participating in Friday’s ceremony to keep devoting time to books.
“Reading was my favorite subject when I was little,” she said, “and that’s how I got to where I am in life.”
CISD Trustees to Consider Compensation Plan
Coppell ISD’s trustees are expected to approve the school district’s compensation plan during their Sept. 28 meeting.
The draft version previewed during the trustees’ August meeting says the starting salary for a new teacher with no experience is $65,000, while newly hired teachers with at least 30 years of experience start at $82,070. The plan includes $1,500 stipends for teachers with graduate degrees, $3,000 stipends for some special education teachers, and $4,000 stipends for bilingual teachers.