Students Helping Students with Butler-Bloomingdale Tutoring Program

A group of students are bridging the gap between the and school districts by volunteering time each week to tutor students at the Walter T. Bergen School after school in the library.

Butler Public Schools Superintendent Mario Cardinale told the board of education about the program, which involves students from the Butler High School National Honor Society (NHS) tutoring the middle-schoolers, during a meeting on Feb. 27. The students, he said, travel to the Walter T. Bergen School with their own transportation to tutor the students in math, English and any other traditional subjects the students need assistance with.

"Anything we can do to improve in the articulation between the two districts is a good thing," Butler Board of Education Member Cynthia Sokoloff told the board last week.

Principal Frank Verducci said the tutoring program launched at the school in the beginning of February and the idea for the program came out of a meeting that he and Butler High School English Supervisor Wayne Dilts were a part of, as well as NHS members.

"We discussed how we could utilize his students at our school to benefit our students academically," Verducci said.

Butler High School Principal Martin Wall said Melanie O'Shea, an NHS member, helped with the planning of the program.

"It was actually proposed by one of our NHS members, Melanie O'Shea, who really responded to a need for some tutoring and it lends itself very well into a peer mentoring program, which I think will evolve from it," Wall said.

So far, the program has been a success Verducci said, with the middle school students looking up to the high-schoolers as role models. In addition to overall tutoring, the NHS members actually help the middle school students complete their homework.