`Glitch doesn’t spoil kids’ Y2K trial run`

By Tom Fontaine
Herald Staff Writer

Mrs. Tina Lieb told her third-grade class the new goal was to eat 2,000 pieces of popcorn in 15 minutes. In Room 106 at Sharpsville’s Seventh Street Elementary School Thursday, the “Millennium Celebration” was in high gear: popcorn was sticking to faces and was missing mouths.

Mrs. Lieb’s class and the rest of the elementary school has been celebrating Y2K all school year by meeting lofty goals.

Mrs. Lieb’s class, for example, has collectively read 2,000 books in past months and also made gingerbread houses containing 2,000 decorative pieces.

And each of the classrooms tried to collect 2,000 coins. Between the classrooms, students collected $402 in coins — a portion of which went to Sharpsville families who can’t afford Christmas presents and the rest to the Sharpsville Veterans of Foreign Wars Post.

On Thursday, students Jessa Campoli, Eddie Enos and Zak Yurchison presented a check to Dennis Chiavazzo, VFW post quartermaster.

Chiavazzo thanked the school and said that the money will go toward the annual MCAR Christmas party; 5,000 popcorn balls it sends to other service clubs, churches, nursing homes and various organizations; Christmas lights and contributions to the Butler Veterans Hospital among other things.

After the check presentation, the students — many sporting construction paper antlers, party hats and blinking noses — were ready to party.

A papier-mache New Year’s ball a little bigger than a basketball hung above the stage, ready to drop. Y2K was being ushered in a few days early.

After a loud countdown, the frenzied students roared “Zero!”

But the ball didn’t budge and soon it was going upward and then it began shaking — a small, perhaps ominous, pre-Y2K glitch.

But then the ball plummeted to the stage and the millennium celebration began.

Bedlam ensued. The papier-mâché ball, which took Mrs. Lieb’s class two days to make, was ripped to shreds in seconds. Students raced around the gymnasium high-fiving teachers and screaming in the mock New Year.

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