First lady surprises St. Johns County assistant principal with phone call

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Melissa Lime received a phone call on Monday night that kept her in suspense.

A White House staffer contacted Lime, the assistant principal at Freedom Crossing Academy in St. Johns County, and asked if she would be available the following day for a phone call.

“Of course, I said yes,” she said. “I had no idea [who it would be].”

When the phone rang on Tuesday, Lime recognized the voice immediately.

First Lady Melania Trump was on the other end of the phone.

“It was just so incredible and amazing. Melania was so incredibly sweet and kind and caring,” Lime said.

The first lady was reaching out to educators across the country during National Teacher Day and Teacher Appreciation Week. Lime, who graduated from St. Augustine High School and grew up in the area, said that she was grateful to be the voice to represent the school district.

“As a district, no matter what role you have, everyone’s serving the community, serving the students in whatever capacity that might look like. Offering technical support. Creating a schedule. We’re reaching out to students who might need extra support or helping parents with home access center and looking up their child’s grades. It all varies,” Lime said.

Lime said that everyone from bus drivers to teachers to IT personnel have been going above and beyond their job titles during an unprecedented time of online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lime said the first lady was authentic and caring and engaging during their conversation and asked what measures the district had taken for students who may have been struggling a little more than normal during this time.

On Tuesday afternoon, Lime tweeted out her thanks to the first lady. Hours later, she responded. Lime’s original tweet, and the first lady’s response, have been liked more than 19,000 times since.

“That was so kind of her just to say, ‘thank you,’” Lime said. “I think in times like this a simple thank you goes so far. Just made my day and makes it personal. I think she really cared. Really cared. She cared so much about the struggling students. Her focus was on how we were reaching out to the struggling students. I was responding on behalf of her appreciation for all of us [in the county]. I just happened to be the voice."

The St. Johns County School District is annually among the state’s top-performing districts. St. Johns has ranked first among the state’s 67 districts for the past nine years in school accountability points. The district had an enrollment of 44,248 students in 2019-20.

Freedom Crossing, a K-8 school that opened in 2018, is one of the newest schools in the area.