Butler County Superintendent Joe Eiland recently introduced a new program to Butler County Elementary Schools that officially kicked off in November.

McKenzie School started “Goodnight Tigers” on November 1.

Georgiana School kicked their program off, “Goodnight Panthers,” on November 15.

Greenville Elementary and W.O Parmer will be a part of the program as well.

The program encourages parents and children to read together by having someone read a book and then upload the video to the school’s Facebook page, where it can be accessed anytime.

“We want to find a way to engage parents to read to their children,” Eiland said.

Eiland said the idea came up during a round table discussion at a conference he attended a little over a year ago. Eiland was the lead on the project and has seen the success other schools have had implementing the program, and knew it was time to bring it to the schools in the area.

Eiland said he will be meeting with the elementary principals on Tuesday to check the progress of the new program. If your elementary school has not started the “Goodnight” reading program, then stay tuned as it will be coming soon.

Eiland said he wants the last thing children do at night before going to sleep is to read a book and for them to understand what they are reading.

Having a teacher, someone from the community, or another student read a book every day that they can access virtually is an easy way to encourage reading.

“Make this an every night ritual for you and your child. Studies have shown that children that are read to do much better in school. We are really trying to work hard to promote reading to our young folks,” Miles Brown, McKenzie school principal, said when introducing the program.

Eiland said feedback from the program has been extremely positive and people all over the country, not just Butler County, are enjoying listening to residents read.