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LaBrae students read to get principal to ‘walk the plank’

Bascom kids must tally 9,000 minutes outside school

Bascom Elementary School second-graders Lillian Simmons, 7, and Jack Gut, 7, look for items in a treasure chest at the school’s Bookaneer Book Fair, which has a pirate theme.

LEAVITTSBURG — Students at Bascom Elementary School are reading as many books as they can as part of a school competition that will end with the principal “walking the plank” Friday.

The children and staff also collected money to buy books to donate to Someplace Safe, Trumbull County’s domestic violence agency.

Bascom Elementary principal Maggie Kowach agreed to walk the plank into a dunking booth if students tallied 9,000 minutes of reading outside of school.  Stacey Biery, Scholastic Book Fair chair and Bascom library aide, said students already read more than 13,000 collective minutes in only two weeks, so Kowach will take the wet walk.

”That is absolutely amazing the number of books they have read. It is nice to be able to get books into the hands of children,” Biery said.

Kowach will walk across a homemade plank and be plunged three times into a dunking booth, once each by the students who have read the most books in kindergarten, first and second grade, Biery said.

The Warren Township firefighters all chipped in to rent the dunking booth and are providing their services to fill up the tank.

Students collected “Pennies for Pirates” to go along with this year’s theme of “Bookaneer Book Fair: Where Books are the Treasure.”

Biery set up a partnership with the students and several Leavittsburg businesses to collect change, now totalling more than $800, for a program called All for Books. All for Books united the school and the community to provide more books for kids and teachers.

All Bascom students had a chance to get books of their own at the book fair, which ended last Friday. The school library was able to add new books, teachers were given books to build and refresh classroom libraries, and a basket of books was donated for children at Someplace Safe.

Biery said more than $1,000 was collected and Scholastic Book Fairs matched monetary donations with a donation of up to $1 million in books from The Scholastic Possible Fund, which distributes books to children.

bcoupland@tribtoday.com

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