Roanoke Elementary School Principal Gets 'Slimed'

Roanoke Elementary School Principal Tom Payton ‘slimed’ last Friday afternoon during an assembly after students at the school completed the Reading Week Challenge.

Last month, Payton, who is infamous for his Reading Week challenges, held an assembly to kick off Roanoke’s Reading Week, his annual reading challenge to his students.

“If you meet my challenge and read for 75,000 minutes (outside school) during the week,” he told the students, “on Friday, March 13, on the Roanoke auditorium stage, at 2:30 p.m., I will encourage a teacher from the top five classes (with the most minutes of reading) to climb up on a ladder and dump a bucket of slime over my head.”

After the students exceeded their requirement of 75,000 minutes of reading with a new record of 119,030 minutes of reading, the teachers representing the class from each grade level with the most minutes of reading, got to slime the principal at the assembly.

Teachers Anselma Jimenez (Kindergarten), Cathy Fasanelli (1st grade), Kelly Dillon (2nd grade), Kelly Cregan (3rd grade) and James Richardson (4th grade) all participated in the ‘sliming’.

“Reading Weeks are a great vehicle to promote the love of reading and the use of the library,” Payton said. “The kids love them, and I don’t mind taking a pie in the face, getting a buzz cut, dressing up in a chicken costume or walking blindfolded through a maze of students if it helps them learn to read!”

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