Books still prizes at Cameo Elementary

Dropping by Cameo Elementary recently near the end of a school day, I came upon Cameo teachers organizing furniture and technology devices in the school’s multi-purpose room.

There was a lot of activity and energy in the air; the event was “Bingo For Books” that would be held that evening.

Talking to veteran teachers Keith and Kathryn Sacane, who were connecting a digital tablet to the projector for a giant image on the wall, they filled in the blanks.

Keith Sacane, who served as a band director for a number of years in our district, has been the music teacher at Cameo in recent years. His wife, Kathryn, is not far off 20 years of teaching, the last 13, or so, at Cameo.

Ever since coming to Cameo to teach, Kathryn Sacane said, there has been a Bingo For Books. “It’s one of the most popular events for our families, and turnout is always great. This year we had almost 200 family members for the evening event.”

Books are the Bingo prize, and Cameo staff gave away around 1,000 books that evening. The evening was fast-paced, and with the incorporation of the iPad Bingo app, they were able to move much more quickly than when selection was done by hand. This means they were able to hand out a lot more books.

The Sacanes shared when preparing for the evening they discovered they could take advantage of a “buy-one-get-one-free” sale with Scholastic books, so they were able to literally double their book stock with the available funding.

“Students went home with an average of seven or eight books each,” Kathryn said. “Just to see the joy on their faces when they got to come up and choose a book was wonderful. Many of the kids proudly chose books for younger siblings, too, who were too little to play.”

Both Sacanes raved about the great support of virtually all of the Cameo staff who are always present — at this event as well as in previous years — to help out with Bingo For Books: setting up; distributing snacks; giving out cards, checking cards; helping out with students; cleaning up afterward; and, basically doing whatever needed doing.

“Actually, a lot of our parents stayed to help clean up and get reorganized, too. We have great families here at Cameo,” Kathryn said.

I do love the fact books are considered prizes.

Cindy Kleyn-Kennedy is the instructional technology coordinator for the Clovis Municipal Schools. She can be reached at

[email protected]