LYNN – Harrington School Principal Debra Ruggiero made good on a promise when she climbed up onto the platform of a dunk tank wearing a pretty print dress, cardigan and stockings, and was shortly dispatched by a direct pitch into the water.Her face registered the surprise, but it was likely only at the timing, not the event. It was the third year Ruggiero has kept a date with the dunk tank as part of the school’s annual Reader Leader celebration.”It’s a collaboration with the Mayor’s office, the library and the teachers,” Harrington Librarian Carole Schutzer said on Friday. “It’s one more step in trying to celebrate reading at the Harrington School and keeping it on the front burner.”Each fall Ruggiero sets a reading goal for the school. This year it was to have 80 percent of the student body become Reader Leaders. To become a reader leader students must earn points. Younger students earn a point for each book that is read to them, beginner readers earn a point for each book they read to a family member and older kids earn points by the number of pages read.Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy dropped by early to hand out citations to the top reader leaders in each grade.”It may not be the top reader or the one who read the most books,” Ruggiero told students. “It might be someone who really tried hard, someone for which reading wasn’t easy.”Traditionally it is only third-, fourth- and fifth-graders who are recognized as Reader Leaders but this year Kennedy handed out a special Library Award to first-grader Nicole Garcia.”These first-graders go up to the library almost every day and take a book to take home to read,” Kennedy said. “This is such a good habit.”Kennedy said with summer coming, students would have plenty of time on their hands and there was no better way to spend it then curled up in the shade with a good book.Ruggiero also recognized students who went above and beyond and best represented the school’s character traits, which include being responsible, caring and a good citizen, to name a few.Then it was time to head outside for the big event.Ruggiero teased the students, calling out, “Do I look like I’m going into a dunk tank?” And she admitted that the school missed its mark by about 91 students but nonetheless she readied for her seat on the dunk tank. Before she hit the water, however, students sunk preschool teacher Joanne Lawrence, third grade teachers Meghan Barry and Ken Robichaud, and retired firefighter Ken Turner, who taunted the kids relentlessly but good-naturedly and they paid him back by dunking him three times.Barry said she would have preferred it if the recent heat wave made another appearance Friday rather than the blustery, cool weather that hung around all morning but she was not going back on her promise.”I’m not convinced any of you can dunk me,” she said to her students.But they did.Ruggiero also taunted the kids, splashing them with water and mock complaining about a meeting she had to attend but in the end she was dunked more than seven times.”We had 389 reader leaders for the entire year,” she said. “That’s an amazing number.”She also had words of encouragement for students who didn’t become Reader Leaders: “Don’t think that you failed. Challenge yourself. Challenge yourself to read this summer, learn new things and build your academic capacity.”Chris Stevens can be reached at [email protected].