COMMUNITY RELATIONS NEWS RELEASE
March 28, 2005
Contact: Nicole Capage, 817.321.1067
Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano at Kuban Elementary School in Phoenix
Two Renaissance Square Celebrates National Literacy Day
with Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano
Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano was the special guest of honor at the Kuban Elementary School celebration of National Literacy Day on March 2nd. Kuban Elementary is the FACES of Change partner school of Two Renaissance Square in Phoenix. Crescent team members from Two Renaissance also volunteered at the Literacy celebration and provided a continental breakfast for the 55 staff members and 30 guests.
Governor Napolitano told the first grade class that it was her privilege to give a book to every first grader in Arizona on this day, and that she was especially happy to read to them one of the poems in the book, Confetti by Pat Mora and Enrique O. Sanchez. The book utilizes a combination of Spanish and English words and the Governor selected a moving poem about sitting on your grandmother's lap and feeling her heart beat as she reads to you. "Close your eyes and imagine you are sitting on the lap of your grandmother or mother or father or sister or whomever reads to you. Keep them shut and imagine while I read". Before leaving, she stopped and handed a book to each child, with a smile and comment for each.
After the Governor departed, Pam Hilgers, assistant property manager at Two Renaissance, asked Clay McAllester, Principal of Kuban Elementary how he had managed such a coup, to get the Governor of Arizona to choose Kuban, the only school she would visit on Literacy Day 2005. He said simply, "We invited her."
