Kevin Kelly/Key photo Kindergarten teacher Sally Robinson leads the parade as Holy Cross School students walk around Budd Park in northeast Kansas city to raise money for a new gym floor.

The barrier would not allow moisture from underneath the floor to escape, and the wood underneath it began to warp. Last spring, the warping became so bad that the gymnasium was closed. Fixing it won't be cheap, but Holy Cross students have taken on the fundraising themselves.

Each of the school's 209 students from kindergarten through eighth grade has promised to walk 10 miles and solicit pledges per mile in hopes of raising a chunk of the $30,000 needed to fix their gym.

"I challenged them to get no less than $60 per family," said Christine Higgins, principal of the northeast Kansas City school where 75 percent of the students are Catholic, 77 percent receive tuition assistance from the Central City School Fund, and 85 percent qualify for federal free or reduced lunches.

"I got a pledge today (Nov. 1) for $200. Our families are stepping up," Higgins said.

While the families step up, the students are stepping out. They launched their 10-mile commitments on All Saints' Day with an all-school hike around the one-mile fitness trail at Budd Park, just across St. John Avenue from the school.

The children from kindergarten through fifth grade made two laps around the park, completing one fifth of their 10 miles. The middle school students literally went the extra mile, putting in three miles on a sparkling clear, crisp autumn afternoon. The remainder will be done around the school's playground, 11 laps to the mile, to be completed by the end of December.

Higgins said if each student raises $50, the fix-the-gym fund will have $10,000. That will be added to a $5,000 grant the school received from the diocesan Education Endowment Trust Fund. That's still half of what will be needed, but enough to perhaps inspire the community at large to chip in and do the rest, the principal said.

"Anything will help," she said. "I consider a big donation to be $1,000."

The problem isn't as simple as slapping down a new wood floor, Higgins said. The concrete sub-floor, originally installed decades ago, isn't level and needs to be replaced. Because humidity in the gym was measured at three times higher than the level that wouldn't cause the next floor to warp, the gym will also need a new ventilation system and dehumidifier.

Parish members have already put their sweat into the project, said Rush. The old floor has been removed with backbreaking manual labor.

"Every time we called a 'work party,' people showed up," Rush said. "Some of them came at 6 (p.m.) right from their jobs and worked until 10."

Rush, who also serves as physical education teacher at St. Ann School in Independence, said he and the children are making do with whatever space he can find. Weather permitting, he can move physical education outside onto the playground for work on gross motor skills such as running. Weather not permitting, he takes small groups of children into a niche in the school cafeteria, where they work on calisthenics and fine motor skills while other students are eating lunch.

"It limits the work we can get in," Rush said. "I can't have more than 12 or 13 kids at a time moving in that small area."

That's not the way to have physical education, said St. Joseph Sister Patricia Clune, interim diocesan superintendent of schools who joined the Holy Cross students on their Nov. 1 stroll through the park.

"All kids deserve the best," Sister Patricia said. "They need to have their gym back where they can play."

Higgins has taken her commitment to the project a step further.

"I challenged the kids that if they raise $10,000, I'll have a buzzcut (haircut) with 'H.C.' carved in it, or they can slime me - their choice," Higgins said.

Slime the principal? That idea comes from the Nickelodeon Network TV show, "You Can't Do That On Television," in which the show's young stars are regularly drenched with buckets of green goo.

"There are recipes for slime on the Internet. It's made out of borax and glue," Higgins said.

Anything for the kids.

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