Chipotle Mexican Grill donated roughly 700 free entrée coupons to Watkins Mill High School as an incentive for students that completed their summer reading for the 2016-2017 school year.

In previous years students who completed their summer reading on time were added to a raffle to win a Chipotle lunch. “[Two] years [ago] we did a drawing for summer reading,” English resource teacher Wendy Farmer said. “The school paid for 20 lunches for kids who finished their summer reading.”

This year all students that completed their summer reading received a coupon for free Chipotle through Jake Park, a Chipotle Marketing Strategist. “[Chipotle] works with hundreds of schools and public libraries across the country,” Park said. “[And] by providing a free, delicious meal as an incentive, we can hopefully encourage students to broaden their horizons through reading.”

Originally the plan was to ask for 20 free entrees to raffle off like in previous years, but Park “said that he supports other schools with the summer reading and wanted to know how many [students],” Farmer said. “So I said ‘I should probably ask for everything I want.’ So I asked for 708…and he [got] back to me and said…he’ll send [the coupons].”

Farmer hopes that with Chipotle’s continued cooperation it’ll encourage more students to complete their summer work. “I think it’s really good that the school’s rewarding students for actually their work on time and turning it in,” sophomore Jamie Carmichael said. “If it keeps continuing then they’d actually get it done on time…who doesn’t like Chipotle.”

Chipotle as a whole supports summer and winter reading so Marketing Strategists are always looking to work with and support schools and libraries. “We hope to expand on the program so that we can continue to encourage students to read,” Park added. “[And] we absolutely plan on continuing our great partnership with Watkins Mill High School.”

“If I knew about [the coupons] before it probably would’ve been a good incentive,” junior Virginia Schlosser said. “It was nice to have…[and] I feel like it would make a lot of students do the summer reading [on time].”