School traditions / One spring evening and the morning after, Garland Elementary, Utah
Raise $10,000 and the Principal Sleeps on the Roof
Schools have discovered the most effective fundraising incentive in America: put an administrator somewhere uncomfortable. The price list is surprisingly consistent.
In March 2023, students at Shawnee Elementary in Clark County, Ohio, read more than 51,000 minutes in a three-week Read-A-Thon, raising money for the parent-teacher organization through sponsors. The school set benchmarks.
$6,000: the PreK-2nd grade principal and a guidance counselor would be duct-taped to the cafeteria wall during lunch.
$8,000: the 3rd-6th grade principal, a guidance counselor and the school resource officer would be pied in the face.
$10,000: the campus principal, Kyle Phelps, would sleep on the school roof for one night.
The students passed all three. On March 31, the day before spring break, the taping and the pies happened. Phelps scheduled his night for April 11 and planned to bring a tent, a sleeping bag and a pillow. "Some of our students think that staff live at the school," he said. "For one night, I am going to experience what that would be like."
Some children believe the staff live at school. For one night, at least, they were right.
In September 2023, in Brookville, Ohio, high school students were challenged by their principal, Jason Stephan, to raise more than $1,000 in a week for a breast cancer charity. If they did, he would sleep on the roof of his office. They raised $2,229. He spent Sunday night up there. His family, he told WHIO, helped him get the ladder up and then took it home with them, so he was there all night long.
His family took the ladder home. I believe he meant it as a joke. I also believe his family had a lovely quiet evening.
Garland Elementary in Utah has done it too, according to posts on the school's feed: a principal camped on the roof and invited families to come by, with treats lowered from above in a basket.
The rooftop is the perfect incentive. It costs nothing, it is visible from the street, and no child can resist the image of the most powerful adult in the building living, briefly, like a raccoon.
At our house the youngest proposed her own read-a-thon. If she read 100 minutes in a week, I would sleep in the backyard. She read 104. I slept in the tent on the lawn on Saturday night. At two in the morning, the dog came out and slept with me. At six, the youngest came out with a granola bar and a flashlight, and asked how it was. I said it was fine. She said, in that case, next time it would be 200 minutes, and the roof.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Garland Elementary public school feed: Mrs. Crane’s rooftop camp garland.besd.net
- Clark-Shawnee district: Principal to spend night on roof after Read-A-Thon,2023 clark-shawnee.k12.oh.us
- WHIO: Brookville principal sleeps on roof, September18,2023 whio.com