Mt. Laurel Elementary School Principal Celita Deem and Assistant Principal Tina Neighbors welcomed students to school on Monday morning, August 24 while taped to two flag poles in front of the school in order to fulfill a promise made to the students.

Deem and Neighbors promised the students they would allow themselves to be taped to the flag poles thet met a $12,000 goal for the PTO sponsored coin drive.   The students not only met the goal but exceeded it with a grand total of $22,446.85 for the entire week.

The coin drive was held August 17-21 in order to raise money for various PTO-sponsored school projects, including technology, student materials  and supplies, and professional development. The coin drive replaced two previous fundraisers at the school for gift wrapping paper and cookie dough. Each student was given a gallon-sized Ziploc bag at the end of the year and asked to collect coins over the summer.  The school sent email reminders to parents over the summer explaining the coin drive fundraiser would replace the other two and that all monies would stay at MLES.

The school held themed days last week to help students remember what type of coins to bring each day.   The days included PJs for Pennies, Neon for Nickels, Disco for Dimes, Quarterback for Quarters, and Crazy for Cash.

Each teacher was given a bucket for the students to pour their money in every morning. Students game by grade level to the coin counter and every child was allowed to get a handful of coins to drop in.

The school held an assembly on Friday to celebrate the success of meeting the initial goal of $12,000.  Because the students did meet their goal by Friday, the class who brought in the most money on Friday for Crazy for Cash day also won the opportunity to slime School Resource Officer Carnell Buford.  Lori Gossett’s fourth-grade class brought in the most money and had a blast pouring slime on Officer Buford’s head.

Students who brought in at least $50 on Friday also got an opportunity to guess how many gumballs were in a gum ball jar and win a free IPad Mini.  The student who got the closest to the correct amount of 2,793 gumballs was Naomi Kelly from Katie Thompson’s first-grade class.

Principal Celita Deem said she was overwhelmed with the success of the event.  She said it would not have been so successful without the hard work the entire school community.

“Dr. Cory Edwards with Edwards Orthodontics was gracious enough to provide Kona Ice for everyone on Friday,” said Deem .  “I want to give a big thanks to our PTO, parents, students, and staff for all of their hard.  We could not have done it without them!”