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HARRISBURG, June 20 – A Susquehanna Township fifth-grader made a little history of her own today, as state Reps. Harry Readshaw, D-Allegheny, and Mark McNaughton, R-Dauphin, recognized her for helping to preserve a piece of Pennsylvania history.

Paige Hisiro, a student at Herbert Hoover Elementary School in the Susquehanna Township School District, raised $800 for the Pennsylvania Gettysburg Monuments Project headed by Readshaw. Together with her classmates, the Herbert Hoover fifth-graders turned over $4,100 to the monument preservation effort, the second greatest amount collected by a Commonwealth school during the school year just ending.

Their money will go toward the perpetual endowment trust funds for three of the 146 Pennsylvania regimental monuments and markers on the battlefield at Gettysburg: two on Culp's Hill marking the location and actions of the 28^th and 29^th regiments of Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. The third is on Little Round Top where Col. Strong Vincent of Erie was mortally wounded during the successful Union defense of the strategic hill on the second day of the three-day engagement.

The endowment trusts will provide funding for future maintenance needs of the monuments.

The Monument Challenge was developed to give Pennsylvania schoolchildren an opportunity to become personally involved in preserving a historic site that plays a major role in their studies of Pennsylvania and American history. The challenge is endorsed by the Pennsylvania State Education Association.

The fund-raising efforts of Hisiro and her classmates included taking pledges for a three-mile walk on City Island in Harrisburg in April.

At today's Capitol ceremony, Readshaw and McNaughton presented Hisiro with a legislative citation honoring her for her dedication to meeting the Monument Challenge.

Readshaw said he knew the school district's late superintendent, Dr. Thomas W. Holtzman Jr. who died earlier this month, was extremely proud of the extraordinary effort put forth by Hisiro and the other Herbert Hoover fifth-graders to help preserve the Pennsylvania monuments.

"Through his encouragement of Paige, her classmates and their teachers, Dr. Holtzman joins them in the legacy of Gettysburg; helping ensure that Pennsylvania's icons of freedom, erected by the very men who fought at Gettysburg, will continue to educate and inspire our state and nation for many generations to come," said Readshaw.

Readshaw added that in recognition of the outstanding contributions of their schools, when the Monument Challenge resumes in the fall, the new fifth-grade classes at Herbert Hoover and at Linglestown Elementary in the Central Dauphin School District, which raised the most money in this year's challenge, will be invited to a kick-off event at the Capitol.

"The students at Herbert Hoover Elementary School should take great pride in having raised the second-highest total in the state," McNaughton said. "And Paige Hisiro deserves special recognition for earning the highest individual total. She worked very hard and the entire community should be proud."