Run, Ernie, Run! School Principal Holds Up His End of Bargain

This is Ernie. This is the . See Ernie run. See Ernie run around the school. Run, Ernie, run!

Linscott Rumford Principal Ernie Wells is running—jogging, actually—around the school, again and again and again, for a reason. To keep his word with Linscott Rumford students.

“I told the kids that for every 100 books they bought (at the school book fair), I’d run around the school 10 times and do 20 pushups,” Wells explained Monday. He calls it “incentive.”

The students bought 1,000 books.

That means Wells had to run around the school 100 times and do 200 pushups.

He’d completed 60 laps before this week. He expected to finish the last 40 laps this past Tuesday. He wanted to finish paying his “debt” soon.

This is the second year Wells has donned a jogging suit at school. He made a similar offer to Linscott Rumford students before last year’s book sale, minus the pushups.

Last year, Lisa Solimine, a lunch mom who has run the school book fair the last two years, said she went to Wells and asked him if he’d do something special for students if they bought a certain number of books.

He got back to her the same day, she said Tuesday, and offered to run 10 times around the school property for every 100 books the students bought. Last year they bought 800 books. So Wells ran 80 laps. Before reporting the result of last year’s book sale, Solimine said she had someone double-check the number of books—only books—sold at the book fair.

Wells agreed to participate in the book sale stunt “just to have some fun with the kids,” he said, and to encourage them to buy books.

“I need exercise” as well, he added Tuesday. He hasn’t lost any weight with his new exercise regimen, he said as he paused to chalk up another lap on a brick on the playground side of the building. Seven times around the school property equals a mile, Wells calculated.

“Two years is enough,” he said before he changed into his running gear. Wells usually puts in his laps at lunchtime or in the early morning. Not Monday. He had an interview to sit in on.

Among the fifth-graders out on the playground after lunch Tuesday, fifth-grader Jack Hayes said students watch for Wells to pass through the playground on his rounds when they’re outside at recess.

Adults usually don’t want to run, Hayes said.

“He’s just an athletic guy, I guess,” Hayes said of his principal.

Fellow fifth-grader Kaitlyn George agreed that it was unusual to see her school principal jogging around the school property during the school day.

Twice, Wells said he came to school at 5 a.m. to get some laps in.

Wells offers the “quirkiest” learning incentives to students, Solimine commented. To get kids into reading, he gives them tee shirts and medals, she said.

“He motivates them into reading and math.”

He expected to finish his last 40 laps in an hour, by 12:30 Tuesday afternoon

As Wells got into his jogging groove Tuesday, a group of fifth-grade girls gathered at one corner of the playground, waiting for him to appear there. Wells said some students cheer him on. Some chase him, he said, when he runs from one end of the playground to the other on his jaunt around the school property.