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Hazleton-area group’s goal: Funds to purchase rewards for students’ perfect attendance.

HAZLETON – Greater Hazleton Partners in Education is looking for, well, more partners in education.
The agency wants businesses interested in helping with an incentive program designed to bolster high school attendance in three local districts.
Executive Director Ed Lyba said the decade-old, nonprofit partnership works to link businesses with schools to the benefit of both, and one program from that connection has been an attendance initiative. The partnership accepts contributions from area businesses that can either be used as or be used to purchase rewards given each school quarter to some students who didn’t miss a single day of school. Currently, the program reaches Weatherly, Hazleton Area and Crestwood high schools.
There are typically more students making the goal than there are rewards, so the gifts are ultimately handed out through a random drawing among those with perfect attendance, Lyba said, but more tax-deductible contributions from businesses would mean more gifts for students. The program applies only to grades nine through 12, the range at which attendance often starts to drop.
“It seems to have taken hold,” Lyba said of the program. “We saw the percent of students with perfect attendance increase.”
The partnership survives primarily on membership paid by participating business and tries to reward them by, among other things, providing virtual tours of those businesses for middle school students on the partnership Web site. “We try to encourage students to realize there are certain skills needed to succeed, and that there are certain companies locally looking for people with those skills,” Lyba said.
The partnership also arranges job shadowing opportunities for students and encourages teachers to visit workplaces, and business people to visit schools.
Businesses interested in participating may contact Lyba at 450-6314 or by e-mail at edufirst@ptd.net. The Web site is www.partnersined.org.