Mr. R.’s World of Math

One of the little parachutists began speaking.
“Which one of you pulled the red rope!” it demanded.
“I think the bigger question is, who are you, and what are you doing in MY classroom?” I asked.
“We’re the ceiling people, and we were here way before you buddy! As a matter of fact, we were on Earth before any of you humans!”

“Well, one thing I’m sure of is that I know you have no right being in this classroom, especially during the school day, so maybe you should go back into the ceiling.”
“No right being here! We were here when there was a tree growing where this school is. We were here in the forest before someone came and cut it down, and built this ugly building!”
“Hey, don’t call our school building ugly!” I yelled.
“It is ugly, UGLY,” said one of the other ceiling people.
“Enough of this!” I said, “We have math right now, and we have to stop wasting time. Can you guys just go back into the ceiling and leave us alone so we can learn some division?”
“No, we can’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because you made our money fall, and now it’s all over the place, and we want it back!”
“Yes, we saw the money. Where did you ceiling people get money from anyway?”
“Oh, we’ve been collecting money that has fallen out of students’ backpacks for over 50 years!”
“What do you even need money for, you live in a ceiling,” asked Jake
“One day, when we have one million dollars, we’re going to buy the land the school is on and replant the forest!”

“If you replant the forest, what’s going to happen to school?” asked Jenna.
“Bye-bye schooly,” said one of the ceiling people.
“Hey!” yelled Larissa, “We love our school.”
At that point I had an idea that could make us all happy.
“Ok, ceiling people, how about for today’s math lesson, I’ll have the students collect your money and count it. Then you can take it back up with you into the ceiling and let us get on with the rest of our day’s learning.”
The ceiling people met and whispered for a while, and then they agreed. But they warned that there better be exactly  $87.28 or there would be big, big, big trouble in the classroom.
“Come on, guys,” I said, “Let’s collect the ceiling people’s money!”
“I don’t even believe in ceiling people,” said José.
“Yeah, this can’t be real. Is this one of your tricks to get us to do math?” asked Nancy.
“No, I’ve never seen these ceiling people before. Besides if we collect their money, they’ll leave us alone.”
Me and my students began to collect the money that was all over the floor.

We found:
320 quarters
69 dimes
5 nickels
1 penny
How much had we found?

How much money was missing?