For roughly 200,000 K-12 students in Hampton Roads, Monday was a new beginning — the start of another school year.
“It’s a fresh start with new opportunities,” said Donald Robertson, Virginia Beach’s superintendent of public schools.
Standing outside Kempsville Meadows Elementary School, the chief executive of the region’s largest school district greeted families alongside teachers and security personnel. Some of the district’s youngest learners were welcomed inside with high-fives and waves as rock music played from a speaker.
Inside, kindergarteners quietly shaded in coloring sheets and shaped Play-Doh. One teacher said, joking, she wonders if her class of mostly 5-year-olds will be just as quiet a couple months from now.
“The nerves are a little real,” said Kempsville Meadows Principal Christa Markert.
At Greenwood Elementary in Newport News, Mayor Phillip Jones greeted students, telling them if they studied hard and paid attention to their teachers, they could be mayor some day.
A police officer handed out golden badges to students who needed bit of encouragement to walk through the doors. The officer called them brave. Principal Ethel Francis walked students hand-in-hand across the street to enter the school, some of them carrying donated hand-sanitizer, wipes and tissues.
Newport News Superintendent Michele Mitchell said every first day of school still felt like her very first.
“A lot of times people think about the first day of school, yes we welcome our kids back, but we’re excited to see our teachers too, and we want them to know how much we appreciate them,” she said. “They provide for our students what they would expect someone to give to their own children.”
With the exception of Chesapeake, all Hampton Roads major cities started Monday morning. Chesapeake will welcome students Sept. 8.
Kathleen Brown, Chair of the Virginia Beach School Board, was among the group welcoming students and their families at Kempsville Meadows. She noted Monday marked the first day of a new policy narrowly passed by the School Board during the summer that bars pre-K through first grade students from using school-issued laptops in the classroom and from taking home those devices.
“It’ll bring them closers to their peers and teachers,” Brown said.
The Williamsburg-James City County system welcomed its 11,000 students back as well Monday — and opened its new JROTC program, which is hosted at Jamestown High School.
“Thank you for your partnership and support as we begin this new school year,” Superintendent Daniel Keever said in a statement. “I look forward to all that we will accomplish together.”
Kristy Brown, a reading specialist at Greenwood Elementary, started her 35th year in education. She stood outside the front doors offering high-fives and hugs, calling out students by name.
“I’m out here every day — rain, cold, snow,” she said. “This is a family. So if I see they’re having an off day, I try to talk to them, see what’s going on, I may walk them to class. Because we all sometimes get up on the wrong side of the bed, or who knows what happened before they got here.”
Staff writer James Robinson contributed to this report.
John Buzbee, 757-879-7421, john.buzbee@virginiamedia.com
Maggie Allwein, 757-672-3310, maggie.allwein24@gmail.com