Loudoun County Public Schools librarians have collected used books from students and staff to send to A.V. Bukani Elementary School in Addo, South Africa.

After hearing about a campaign to bring back a library to A.V. Bukani, librarians in Loudoun County spread the word among their students and staff and collected more than 1,500 donated books.

Larry and Eileen Kugler launched the library campaign in South Africa after volunteering at the school for two years. Larry, a retired elementary school teacher and administrator in Fairfax schools, and Eileen, the author of a book about the benefits of diversity in schools, first traveled to the country in 2006 on an educational tour of its schools.

Libraries are rare in many developing countries, where literacy rates are low and resources scarce. Many aid organizations and foundations support efforts to ship books overseas.

The books donated by LCPS will become part of a 20,000-title collection loaded onto a 40-foot shipping container this summer bound for the South African city of Port Elizabeth.

From there, the container will be trucked to A.V. Bukani, which is in a rural township 40 miles away.

At Eagle Ridge Middle School, the library and the Student Council Association partnered to promote a book drive to collect used elementary books from students and staff for A.V. Bukani. The SCA students helped to box, label, color code and insert pockets and cards in the 580 books collected.

At the April Loudoun Educational Media Association meeting at Tolbert Elementary, librarians from many schools brought books and school supplies donated by their students, teachers and themselves.

This ended up totaling more than 1,000 titles, including 20 boxes of books from Legacy Elementary.

The Kuglers plan to visit Loudoun in August to provide staff development and support.

For additional information visit the Kugler’s blog at http://www.KuglersinSouthAfrica.blogspot.com.

The nation’s top 100 student rocketry teams will compete in the eighth annual Team America Rocketry Challenge May 15 at Great Meadow in The Plains.

The finalists include teams from 30 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands who qualified after months of preparation from a field of 669 squads and thousands of students.

Four teams from Virginia will be competing – from Burke, Chantilly, Charlottesville and Falls Church.

Qualifying teams of middle and high school students have the chance to earn $60,000 in scholarships and prizes. The TARC champion will also win the opportunity to compete internationally at an air show near London in July.

The list of finalists is available at http://www.rocketcontest.org.

TARC teams are challenged to design, build and launch a model rocket with a raw-egg payload to an altitude of 825 feet and achieve a flight duration between 40 and 45 seconds. The rocket must return the egg safely and unbroken without using a parachute.

The goal of the contest is to bolster student interest in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields and attract more young people into aerospace careers.

For more information about TARC, visit http://www.rocketcontest.org.

The Loudoun Education Alliance of Parents (LEAP) concludes its meeting schedule for the 2009-2010 school year with a doubleheader May 12 starting at 7:30 p.m. at the School Administration Building in Ashburn.

The meeting, which begins at 7:30 p.m. at the School Administrative Offices in Ashburn, will feature LEAP’s Annual Town Meeting and a “film for thought.”

The meeting will begin with the election of LEAP officers for 2010-2011 and a review of the LEAP program suggestions for next school year.

As the delegates individually prioritize the proposed program topics, LEAP will host an abbreviated version of its second annual Movie Night, postponed by snow in February. The program will feature excerpts from the documentary “Making Schools Work with Hedrick Smith” followed by a discussion of the film led by Park View High School Principal Dr. Virginia Minshew. In the documentary, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith travels from the inner city to rural towns to observe how some districts and reform models are making a difference. The video also spotlights important district-wide reforms in New York City, San Diego, and Charlotte, N.C. After the film, Minshew will highlight the steps taken at Park View that led to the school’s recognition as a “Breakthrough School” and compare strategies with those described in the documentary.

The Loudoun Education Alliance of Parents (LEAP) is a non-partisan network that promotes interaction between parents, teachers, School Board members and members of Loudoun County Public Schools administrative team.

Each two-hour program features a panel discussion on topics of interest to parents and members of the community at-large and an update from LCPS Superintendent Edgar B. Hatrick III. Each LCPS school elects a delegate from its PTA or PTO to attend LEAP meetings. However, members of the public are always welcome to attend.