Sticking principal William Marble to a wall helped raised funds for Kingston Elementary’s fifth-graders of nearly $500. He remained there for two hours.
The Kingston Elementary School’s all-purpose room had another role on March 27 – sticking the principal to a wall.
The stunt was part of a fundraising drive for the fifth-grade class that netted $948. For each dollar donated, students got one piece of tape they could use to keep William Marble adhered to the wall for about two hours.
PTA president Carli Santiago said the money collected in March is the most for the drive in her eight years, something she attributed to the involvement of all the school’s students.
“Something super fun for everyone in the school to be able to participate in and think that was something, that was pretty big,” she enthused. “A lot of the fundraisers I feel like rely on parent help and parent participation, and this was just something that the kids got to do …
“I just think the kids getting to do the thing was super fun.”
The PTA uses its funds to pay for field trips, yearbooks and – for this year – fifth-grade T-shirts. Santiago said she and her husband donated about 12 rolls of tape and ended up using about nine-and-a-half, with students buying between one to 20 pieces.
Besides fundraising for fifth-graders, the PTA also raises money for other students, including a trunk or treat in October and a parent’s night out event.
This isn’t the first time that Marble has been stuck; in 2016, he was adhered to a wall as part of a donation drive.
Santiago, whose two children are fifth-graders, said students were excited for this year’s donation drive.
“The sweetest thing they’d do is come up and they would say, ‘Dr. Marble, are you doing OK up there?'” Santiago noted. “And to me, it was just so sweet to see these kids that were … still putting their strips of tape on, but making sure he was OK, which I thought was super sweet.
“It was so cute to see all these kids be tickled pink because this was something they’ve never got to do.”
Santiago also described the wall sticking as a memorable experience for students.
“And the amount of people that I heard say their kids came home talking all about it was, that’s the point,” she obsrved. “To make it a memorable experience for the whole school was honestly the biggest point of it. Raising money is great, but doing something for the whole school … and for them to all get to be involved in something super fun, to me was the best part.”
